Patient experience has become a hot topic, and hospital managements understand the importance of trying to improve patient satisfaction. One of the things they do is collect patient feedback forms routinely , so that they can act on the complaints they receive, and fix problems. This is all well and good, but the trouble is that most patients and family members don't bother to provide feedback - and the quality of the feedback they give is poor. This is true for many reasons.
Firstly, while the patient is in hospital, they're scared to criticise the medical staff, because they don't want them to get upset . They are worried that negative comments will mean that their patient will be neglected. This usually means that by the time they're ready for discharge (which is when they are asked to fill up the feedback form) they've often forgotten a lot of the things which they were unhappy…
