Reports and complaints procedures

Question 1

What are the stages of reporting incidents and accidents ?

Answer 1

1. Detect incident or accident
2. Record incident or accident
3. Report incident or accident to relevant person
4. Classify incident or accident according to type and severity.
5. Priorities issues for appropriate action
6. Propose preventative measures
7. Implement change to working practices.
8. Monitor effectiveness of changes in preventing future incidents

Question 2

What are the barriers to incident reporting?

Answer 2

The incident or accident is seen as not important at the time
The incident form is to long or requires to much detail
Care staff have more pressing duties
It may be difficult to access the person who needs to receive the incident/accident report.
There may be pressure from manager not to report incident and accidents.

Question 3

What problems may occur?

Answer 3

There may be common problems with the evidence in reports such as inconsistency from witness statements, lack of detail in statements, poor recall of events, conflicts with evidence, eg written and audio and low standards of written English.

Question 4

What are the key points of complaints procedures?

Answer 4

All care settings must have them in place
All care settings must enable service users to access and use them
They are checked when care providers are inspected
They can lead to service improvements

Question 5

What rights are there to complain?

Answer 5

Service users have the right for complaints to be dealt with within an appropriate time frame as well as complaints to be taken seriously, which would mean that a full and thorough investigation of concerns being raised. Service users also have the right to information about the outcomes of investigation into their complaints