When a patient complains

Aim

Part 1 was published in the previous issue of Dental Nursing. It discussed why people might complain about their dental treatment and how the dental team should respond. When read together, these two articles will:

Objectives

This article relates to GDC development outcomes A and D.

In part one, we established that, by inviting the patient to use an informal complaints process at an early stage, the dental team can reduce the need for the patient to adopt a more formal route (such as the GDC or resorting to lawyers) to resolve things at a later date.

Although there is no one single method for the in-house team to adopt when dealing with a complaint, there are a number of steps that should always be considered. The outcome is likely to be less effective if any of the steps are omitted.