Intended for healthcare professionals

Careers

Doctors most complained about profession in hospitals

BMJ 2012; 345 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e5874 (Published 31 August 2012) Cite this as: BMJ 2012;345:e5874
  1. Caroline White
  1. 1BMJ
  1. cwhite{at}bmj.com

Doctors continue to be the most complained about groups of healthcare professionals in hospital and community services and are around twice as likely to be complained about as nurses, show the latest figures on written complaints made about the NHS in England.

A report on written complaints in the NHS for 2011-12, published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre, shows that the “medical profession” attracted the largest proportion of complaints about NHS staff in hospital and community health services.

They clocked up 49 300 (just under 46%) written complaints compared with nursing staff, who attracted 23 300 (22%).

General practice also attracted its fair share of discontented patients in 2011-12, with complaints made about family health services, including general practice, rising by marginally over 8% to 54 870, up from 50 708 in 2010-11.

But this figure may not reflect the whole picture as the number of primary care trusts unable to supply complete data increased from 29 in 2010-11 to 36 in 2011-12.

More than half (54.5%; 29 897) of the complaints on family health services were about medical services, although this figure masks considerable variation between strategic health authorities, with the most complaints being made by patients in the north east of England (69.1%).

The second biggest source of complaints was general practice administration, accounting for almost a quarter of written complaints about family health services.

Just over 36% of complaints (19 300) were about decisions, advice, and treatment provided by a care professional, representing an increase of nearly 11 per cent on the previous year, when there were 17 500 complaints of this type.

Written complaints about hospital and community services also rose by 8.3% to 107 259 in 2011-12. Between year comparisons are difficult because foundation trusts have had to submit these data since only April 2011, and 23 did not supply this type of information in 2010-11.

The total number of written complaints for both primary and secondary care reached 162 129 in 2011-12, an increase of 8.3% on the previous year and equivalent to more than 3000 written complaints a week, says the report.

But the rise was just over 1% (from 148 900 to 150 900) when only the 501 NHS organisations (350 NHS trusts and 151 Primary Care Trusts) who reported data for both 2010-11 and 2011-12 are considered.