How do I make a complaint about my NHS care? A simple guide for patients and families in Northern Ireland

Summary

At Patient Safety Learning we often get asked by patients and families who have received poor healthcare what they need to do to make a complaint. Although we cannot get directly involved in individual cases, we have put together a simple guide on the steps you can take if you need to make a complaint about NHS care in Northern Ireland.

We also have the following guides:

• How do I make a complaint about my NHS care in England: a simple guide for patients and families
• How do I make a complaint about my NHS care in Scotland: a simple guide for patients and families
• How do I make a complaint about my NHS care in Wales: a simple guide for patients and families
• How do I make a complaint about my private care: a simple guide for patients and families
• How do I make a complaint: Sources of help and advice

If you are a healthcare professional looking at these pages, the NHS Complaint Standards, model complaint handling procedure and good complaint handling guides set out how organisations providing NHS services should approach complaint handling. They apply to all NHS organisations in England and independent healthcare providers who deliver NHS-funded care.

Content

If you are unhappy with the care and treatment you have received from health or social care services in Northern Ireland, you have the right to make a complaint. Your concerns could be about any aspect of your care.

Step 1: Make a complaint to the practitioner or institution concerned

You can speak directly to a member of staff involved in your care about your complaint and ask for a copy of the complaints procedure.

If your complaint relates to services provided by a GP, dentist, pharmacist or optician you can contact the Health and Social Care Board’s complaints office. They will then act as a go-between and offer an ‘honest broker’ service. They may also offer conciliation services if appropriate.

If the complaint is about a nursing or residential home, you should contact the home directly, addressing your complaint to the home manager.

There are six health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland. Details are available on the Northern Ireland healthcare gateway.

If the NHS organisation thinks that your complaint has been fully investigated, they should send you a full written response. They should also tell you what to do next if you are not satisfied.

If you remain unhappy, you can refer your complaint to the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints (the Ombudsman). The Ombudsman will then consider whether this is a matter they can investigate—see Step 2.

Step 2: Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints

The Ombudsman can investigate:

• All complaints about health and social care services including hospitals, GPs and dentists.
• Private sector complaints where health and social care are funding the care or service.
• Cases of unfair treatment or poor service where the complaint has not been resolved to your satisfaction.
• Complaints relating to professional judgement of clinical decisions in a healthcare setting, as well as how your complaint has been handled.

The Ombudsman cannot investigate.

• Private medical care.
• Complaints relating to access to information and the Data Protection Act.

If more than six months have passed since the completion of the public body’s consideration of your complaint then the Ombudsman may not be able to investigate. However, they may be prepared to extend the time frame and you should ask for any special circumstances, such as ill health, to be taken in to account

You should make a complaint in writing or by using the forms available on the Ombudsman’s website.

The Ombudsman can make recommendations about what should be done to make matters right including changes in practice. They cannot award compensation or take disciplinary action against individual members of staff.

If you need help to raise your concerns, you can contact the Patient and Client Council’s complaint support officers by telephone, email, letter or through their website. They will listen to your experiences and offer the advice or support that you need.

Step 3: Judicial review

In some cases, it may be appropriate to use the judicial review procedure, particularly if you need to urgently challenge a decision made by an NHS organisation, for example, a decision not to provide certain treatment.

Judicial review is a remedy of last resort and will only rarely be applicable to NHS complaints. You will need a solicitor to offer you specialised advice about whether there are grounds to make an application for judicial review. They will also offer you advice on whether it is worthwhile becoming involved in what can be an expensive and complex legal procedure. The Law Society provides a list of lawyers who specialise in medical matters.