Communication problems are top of patients’ concerns about hospital care (April 2019)

Summary

Patients have different concerns from clinicians when asked about problems with their care, and may identify preventable safety issues.

When trained volunteers surveyed 2,471 patients from three NHS Trusts in England, 23% of patients identified concerns about their care. The biggest category of concerns related to communication, with staffing issues and ward environment the next most common and safety issues. Although the majority of safety issues were categorised as negligible or minor, they were also seen as definitely or probably preventable. Patient-reported concerns identified new areas which may not have been picked up by staff, such as fear of other patients or delays in procedures. This is one of the largest studies to look at patient safety concerns from the patient perspective.

This study suggests that inpatient surveys can identify patient safety issues and that collecting this data could help trusts identify areas where patient experience could be improved. However, for the data to be useful, it needs to be routinely collected, reviewed and acted upon, which may be difficult to implement.