What we do
We take your feedback seriously, aiming to quickly resolve any concerns you may have about your care and to pass on any compliments to our staff.
Our Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) can help you by:
- Providing information about our services
- Listening to your comments, compliments or concerns
- Helping you to resolve, as quickly as possible, any problems or issues that you have about our services.
- Arranging help for you to access our services – e.g translation and interpretation services.
- Giving you information about the formal complaints process and independent advocacy services.
PALS helps the NHS by listening to your concerns and suggestions which helps improve services.
Raising concerns
If you have a concern about your care or treatment or any aspect of your stay with us, please raise this in the first instance with a member of staff in the ward or department you are
visiting. That way we can try to resolve your concerns as quickly as possible.
If your concern cannot be dealt with by the ward or department involved, or you are not satisfied with the response, please then contact the PALS team.
You may ask a friend or relative to contact PALS on your behalf but we must have permission before we can discuss your personal circumstances, to ensure their confidentiality is safeguarded.
If your concerns can be resolved quickly and informally we will do our best to put things right by giving on the spot advice, or by contacting the relevant staff to investigate and respond directly to you within a three to five days.
Making a formal complaint
If you remain dissatisfied after speaking to a member of staff then let the PALS team know you would like to make a formal complaint.
We take your concerns or complaints about our services very seriously and want to make sure that we deal with them in an efficient and open way. We aim to deal personally with each one and you will have a named complaint facilitator who will contact you regularly over the period of time it takes to investigate your concerns
There may be some issues that we can resolve quickly, but others may take a little more time to address as we may have to do a more detailed investigation before we can provide you with our response or arrange to meet with you. A member of the complaints team will discuss and agree with you reasonable timescales for this to happen. Depending on how complex your complaint is the timescale can range between 25 – 65 working days.
We’d really appreciate if you could leave us some feedback about your experience of our formal complaint service.
Contact us
Telephone: 03033 306518
Email: nlg-tr.pals@nhs.net
In person: We have a PALS office on the Scunthorpe and Grimsby hospital sites.
Write to us: you can write to us at the following addresses:
Patient Advice and Liaison Service
Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital
Scartho Road
Grimsby
North East Lincolnshire
DN33 2BA
Patient Advice and Liaison Service
Scunthorpe General Hospital
Cliff Gardens
Scunthorpe
North Lincolnshire
DN15 7BH
Independent Advice
If you feel it would help to have the assistance of someone outside the Trust with your concerns, the Independent Complaints Advocacy Service (ICA) is available free of charge. For confidential advice ICA can be contacted on telephone number 0300 456 8349.
Other people you may want to contact
You might like to contact Healthwatch to share your feedback on health and care services. They can provide guidance, information and signposting. Healthwatch North Lincolnshire can be contacted on 01724 844986. Healthwatch North East Lincolnshire can be contacted on 01472 361459.
If we cannot resolve your complaint
We will make every effort to resolve your complaint. If, however, you feel dissatisfied with the response provided you can contact the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. Their contact details are:
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
Millbank Tower
Millbank
LONDON
SW1P 4QP
Telephone: 0345 015 4033
Website: www.ombudsman.org.uk