Health Service Commissioner : first report for session 1981-82 : selected investigations completed April-September 1981 / Health Service Commissioner.

  • Great Britain. Health Service Commissioner.
Date:
[1981]
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Health Service Commissioner : first report for session 1981-82 : selected investigations completed April-September 1981 / Health Service Commissioner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    organisation. The DA said that neither the consultant nor the defence organisa- tion was willing to provide any additional information about the complaint and the consultant was not prepared to meet the complainant. 23. Amongst the correspondence between the DA and the consultant, there is a letter dated 14 July 1978 in which the consultant referred to the complainant’s correspondence as a ‘considerable source of nuisance’ and said that ‘a lot of my valuable time has been wasted in going through this lengthy correspondence for nearly a year’. The consultant told my officer that he was only prepared to go ‘so far’ in allowing administrative matters of this nature to interfere with his job of treating patients. Findings 24. I think there was perhaps fault on both sides. I accept the consultant’s view that he ought not to be expected to deal with complaints when he is treating a patient or is in the middle of a ward round. This seems to me to be quite right and I think it was unreasonable for the complainant and his wife to have demanded immediate attention to their complaints. But I consider that the protracted correspondence which the consultant complained had wasted so much of his time might have been avoided had he suggested at the outset that they made an appointment to see him at a more appropriate time, rather than rejecting their approach unconditionally. (e) The complaint about the AHA’s handling of the complaint (i) The AHA repeatedly failed to reply satisfactorily to paragr aphs 4, 28 and 33 of the complainant’s representations 25. In paragraph 4 the complainant referred to his encounter with the SHO who was accompanied by the NO (paragraphs 4 and 5 above). The complainant referred to the difficulties in communications and to his impression that the NO was obliged to prompt the SHO in an effort to obtain a decision about the use of an anaesthetic. The complainant referred back to the subject matter of para- graph 4 and the lack of response from the AHA in his paragraphs 19, 31, 36, 42, 48, 54 and 69a. The AHA, in a series of letters between 27 September 1977 and 21 September 1978, pointed out the SHO’s right to exercise his clinical judgment, but admitted that the administration of a general anaesthetic might have been the better course of treatment from the start and accepted that the SHO could have dealt with the complainant more tactfully and explained what he was doing and why. They apologised for the shortcomings in the service, but they did not specifically answer the complaint that the SHO was unable to understand or communicate with the complainant. 26. The complainant’s paragraph 28 (contained in his letter of 12 February 1978) asked for clarification as to which of the two consultants mentioned in the AHA’s letter of 4 January 1978 was in charge of the A and E department. The next response to this letter, which contained many other points as well, was a letter dated 6 April 1978 from the DA stating that it was felt that all the points raised in the complainant’s letter of 12 February 1978 had been answered. The complainant disputed this and repeated his request for clarification in sub- sequent paragraphs 36, 42 and 49. In his letter of 7 July 1978 the DA answered the point and admitted that his letter of 4 January had been ambiguous.