It is impossible for any professional person to stop every complaint from arising. It is better to adopt a positive state of mind and accept that occasionally you will get a sub-optimal result or that for a variety of reasons (some beyond your control) that the patient is disappointed or unhappy with something that happened during their visit.

By encouraging patients to express themselves as they leave the treatment area you can often get them to tell you what could have been done better from their perspective.

There are many ways of identifying dissatisfaction:

• Prominently displaying your complaints procedure so that patients don’t have to ask for it and encouraging them to share any negative views with appropriate staff
• Train all staff to identify the ‘body language’ associated with dissatisfaction. The aim is to encourage patients to tell you if they have a problem, before they tell someone else
• Comment or feedback cards - usually only completed by patients who are particularly displeased or delighted with service. It is, of course, helpful to collect positive feedback as well as negative and neutral feedback

By handling this issue at a local level it may be possible to contain the issue and prevent it from escalating out of your control. It can also help to avoid the dissatisfied patient from bottling up a store of complaints.

Dental Protection’s Handling Complaints advice booklet offers lots more guidance on this subject. It can be found in the Risk Management section of the website.