Decision report 201102277

Summary
Mr C made several complaints about the care and treatment he received in hospital, most of which we did not uphold. He said that a communication failure meant that staff were not expecting him when he arrived. However, we found that the staff nurse had been told that he was coming in and that, although there was a delay in providing him with a bed, this was not unreasonable in the circumstances. Mr C also said that he asked for a doctor when he felt that he was developing a urinary tract infection, but no doctor attended. We found that nursing staff had contacted the night team, which included medical staff, and the team had said that the staff should wait for the results of tests on a urine sample that had been taken. We found that staff acted reasonably in response to Mr C's requests and noted that a consultant saw him the next day. Mr C asked to see a doctor again the next evening. Nursing staff again contacted the night team, who said that they would see him after they had seen some other patients. However, Mr C then decided to discharge himself and was ready to leave when the team arrived.

Mr C also told us that some nursing staff displayed hostility towards him. We found no evidence of this, but noted that Mr C felt very frustrated by what he saw as staff failure to respond to his requests and wishes. We took the view that staff might have been able to prevent the situation escalating if they had more expertise in listening and responding to feedback. We noted that Mr C's complaint resulted in the board deciding that staff should have additional training in relevant techniques.

We did uphold Mr C's complaint that the board delayed in responding when he complained to them. We found the response itself to be satisfactory, although we thought the board could have provided Mr C with more information about the training they had arranged for staff in response to his complaint.

Recommendation
We recommended that the board:
• provide us with further information about the training in de-escalation techniques that was provided to staff in response to this complaint.