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The tip of an iceberg? A cross-sectional study of the general public's experiences of reporting healthcare complaints in Stockholm, Sweden

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the hypothesis that complaints of adverse events related to encounters with healthcare personnel are underreported and to identify barriers to filing such complaints. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study, where a questionnaire was sent to the respondents asking whether or not t...

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Autores principales: Wessel, Maja, Lynøe, Niels, Juth, Niklas, Helgesson, Gert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Group 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3269049/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22282539
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000489
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author Wessel, Maja
Lynøe, Niels
Juth, Niklas
Helgesson, Gert
author_facet Wessel, Maja
Lynøe, Niels
Juth, Niklas
Helgesson, Gert
author_sort Wessel, Maja
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVES: To investigate the hypothesis that complaints of adverse events related to encounters with healthcare personnel are underreported and to identify barriers to filing such complaints. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study, where a questionnaire was sent to the respondents asking whether or not they have filed complaints of adverse events. Respondents were also asked whether they have had reasons for doing so but abstained, and if so their reasons for not complaining. The authors also asked about participants' general experience of and trust in healthcare. SETTING: The County of Stockholm, Sweden. PARTICIPANTS: A random sample of 1500 individuals of the general population registered by the Swedish National Tax Board as living in the County of Stockholm in April 2008. Of the selected group, aged 18–99 years, 50% were women and 50% men. Response rate was 62.1%, of which 58% were women and 42% were men; the median age was 49 years. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Primary outcome measures were whether the participants have filed a formal complaint with the Patients' Advisory Committee and whether they have had reason to file a complaint but have refrained from doing so. Secondary outcome measures were the participants' general experience of and trust in healthcare. RESULTS: Official complaints have been filed by 23 respondents (2.7%, 95% CI 1.7% to 3.7%), while 159 (18.5%, 95% CI 15.9% to 21.1%) stated that they have had legitimate reasons to file a complaint but have abstained (p<0.001). The degree of under-reporting was greater among patients with a general negative experience of healthcare (37.3%, 95% CI 31.9% to 42.7%) compared with those with a general positive experience (4.8%, 95% CI 2.4% to 7.2%). The reasons given for abstaining were, among others, ‘I did not have the strength’, ‘I did not know where to turn’ and ‘It makes no difference anyway’. Respondents with a general negative experience also had lower trust in healthcare. CONCLUSIONS: The authors found a considerable discrepancy between the actual complaint rate and the number of respondents stating that they have had reasons to complain but have abstained. This indicates that in official reports of complaints, the authors only see ‘the tip of an iceberg’.
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spelling pubmed-32690492012-02-08 The tip of an iceberg? A cross-sectional study of the general public's experiences of reporting healthcare complaints in Stockholm, Sweden Wessel, Maja Lynøe, Niels Juth, Niklas Helgesson, Gert BMJ Open Patient-Centred Medicine OBJECTIVES: To investigate the hypothesis that complaints of adverse events related to encounters with healthcare personnel are underreported and to identify barriers to filing such complaints. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study, where a questionnaire was sent to the respondents asking whether or not they have filed complaints of adverse events. Respondents were also asked whether they have had reasons for doing so but abstained, and if so their reasons for not complaining. The authors also asked about participants' general experience of and trust in healthcare. SETTING: The County of Stockholm, Sweden. PARTICIPANTS: A random sample of 1500 individuals of the general population registered by the Swedish National Tax Board as living in the County of Stockholm in April 2008. Of the selected group, aged 18–99 years, 50% were women and 50% men. Response rate was 62.1%, of which 58% were women and 42% were men; the median age was 49 years. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Primary outcome measures were whether the participants have filed a formal complaint with the Patients' Advisory Committee and whether they have had reason to file a complaint but have refrained from doing so. Secondary outcome measures were the participants' general experience of and trust in healthcare. RESULTS: Official complaints have been filed by 23 respondents (2.7%, 95% CI 1.7% to 3.7%), while 159 (18.5%, 95% CI 15.9% to 21.1%) stated that they have had legitimate reasons to file a complaint but have abstained (p<0.001). The degree of under-reporting was greater among patients with a general negative experience of healthcare (37.3%, 95% CI 31.9% to 42.7%) compared with those with a general positive experience (4.8%, 95% CI 2.4% to 7.2%). The reasons given for abstaining were, among others, ‘I did not have the strength’, ‘I did not know where to turn’ and ‘It makes no difference anyway’. Respondents with a general negative experience also had lower trust in healthcare. CONCLUSIONS: The authors found a considerable discrepancy between the actual complaint rate and the number of respondents stating that they have had reasons to complain but have abstained. This indicates that in official reports of complaints, the authors only see ‘the tip of an iceberg’. BMJ Group 2012-01-26 /pmc/articles/PMC3269049/ /pubmed/22282539 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000489 Text en © 2012, Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode.
spellingShingle Patient-Centred Medicine
Wessel, Maja
Lynøe, Niels
Juth, Niklas
Helgesson, Gert
The tip of an iceberg? A cross-sectional study of the general public's experiences of reporting healthcare complaints in Stockholm, Sweden
title The tip of an iceberg? A cross-sectional study of the general public's experiences of reporting healthcare complaints in Stockholm, Sweden
title_full The tip of an iceberg? A cross-sectional study of the general public's experiences of reporting healthcare complaints in Stockholm, Sweden
title_fullStr The tip of an iceberg? A cross-sectional study of the general public's experiences of reporting healthcare complaints in Stockholm, Sweden
title_full_unstemmed The tip of an iceberg? A cross-sectional study of the general public's experiences of reporting healthcare complaints in Stockholm, Sweden
title_short The tip of an iceberg? A cross-sectional study of the general public's experiences of reporting healthcare complaints in Stockholm, Sweden
title_sort tip of an iceberg? a cross-sectional study of the general public's experiences of reporting healthcare complaints in stockholm, sweden
topic Patient-Centred Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3269049/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22282539
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000489
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