Feedback

Feedback and Compliments

We’re always glad to hear about anything you think we’re doing well.

Friends and Family Test

Friends and family test: We would like to hear about your experience of our services. Let us know by completing our anonymous friends and family test. Your comments will help us to make changes and take action when there’s a problem. You can give your feedback online, on the ward or via a text message. You will receive a text message with a link to the test within a few days of using our services. If you do not want to receive the text message please contact our patient experience team by sending an email to imperial.patient.experience@nhs.net or inform the receptionist when you arrive for your appointment.

NHS Choices

Give your feedback on any of our services through NHS Choices. Search or navigate to the page for the hospital or service you’ve visited, click on ‘reviews and ratings’ and ‘review this hospital yourself’. You’ll be able to complete the friends and family test, give us a star rating for areas like cleanliness, dignity and respect, and post a comment on the web page, which we’ll respond to.

Twitter

Tweet at us @ImperialNHS or direct message us. We monitor Twitter from 9.00-17.00, Monday to Friday. If your issue concerns clinical care, we will direct message you and ask for your contact details so our patient advice and liaison service can contact you.

Positive Staff Feedback:

Make a Difference

If you’ve had a positive experience with one of our members of staff who has made a difference to your time in hospital, you can nominate them for an award.

‘Make a Difference’ is our staff recognition scheme. It rewards the hard work, dedication and achievements of those individuals that go out of their way to exceed your expectations. So if someone’s made a difference to you, why not show them!

How to make a nomination

Submit a Make a Difference nomination form online to share positive feedback on a member of our staff for their outstanding service.

Why nominate someone

There are lots of reasons why you might nominate someone. For example, you may notice your nominee has a great rapport with patients or visitors, or that he or she is supportive and kind to their colleagues. You may feel your visit or stay in hospital was improved by the personal care this person provided to you. Or you may notice how your nominee takes particular pride in their job, or visibly wants to exceed the expectations of those around them. Whatever it is that makes one of our staff special to you, we want to hear about it.

The Make a Difference award scheme is funded by Imperial Health Charity. If you have any comments or feedback on our recognition scheme please email: imperial.MakeADifference@nhs.net.

Daisy Award

Nominate a nurse or midwife for exceptional care
Nominate a nurse or midwife for an internationally recognised Daisy Award

*The DAISY Award is for registered nurses and midwives only.

If you experience or observe extraordinary and compassionate care by a nurse or midwife at the Trust, please use the online form below to nominate them for a Daisy Award.

Patients, their families or carers can nominate nurses and midwives at our Trust, who have shown outstanding clinical skill and compassionate, for a ‘DAISY Award for Exceptional Nurses’.

Four awards will be presented every two months with the winners receiving a Healer’s Touch sculpture, a copy of the nomination and their name entered onto the Healer's Touch website.

Frequently asked questions

You can download or print out information about the Daisy Award and how it works, or visit the Daisy Awards website.

Raising concerns:

We aim to provide the best care to our patients, but we know we don’t always get it right. If you have a concern, we encourage you to let us know as soon as you can. We will listen to you and take your feedback seriously. By letting us know about your experiences, we can identify problems and make improvements.

Often the quickest and easiest way to resolve a problem or to answer your questions, is to speak to the staff who are caring for you or your relative or friend. It’s usually best to try and address problems as they arrive and before they become a formal complaint. For example, if you have waited a long time at an outpatient appointment, tell the nurse in charge. He or she should be able to give you an explanation and, if it is a common problem, feedback to the people responsible for organising the service to see if improvements can be made.

If for any reason you don’t feel comfortable speaking to the staff caring for you, or you’re not happy with the action taken, you can contact our patient advice and liaison service. (PALS).

Informal complaints

If you are not happy you should speak to the hospital staff caring for you. Often things can be put right this way.

Patient advice and liaison service (PALS)

If you want to talk about the problem with someone else in the hospital, you can contact the patient advice and liaison service, Patient advice and liaison service (PALS).

What is PALS?

PALS is a confidential service providing support and information to patients, relatives and visitors on the following:

Listen to your concerns, suggestions or queries related to experiences in our hospitals
Provide information about our services
Resolve any problems quickly and informally on your behalf
Feedback your views so we can continue improving services and patient experience
Where appropriate, refer you to other sources of help

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust consists of five London hospitals. Our team can support if your request applies to one of the following:

Hammersmith Hospital, Acton
Queen Charlotte’s & Chelsea Hospital, Acton
St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington
Western Eye Hospital, Marylebone
Charing Cross Hospital, Hammersmith

Contact PALS

You can contact the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust PALS team in several ways:

Complete a PALS feedback form – use this form to request assistance, raise a concern or give feedback. If you would like a response from PALS, please provide your preferred contact details
Telephone: Patients and visitors of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust can call 020 3312 7777. Opening times are 10.00 to 16.00, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays)
Email imperial.PALS@nhs.net – please provide as many details as possible, including which of our five London hospitals your request applies to
Post:
PALS Manager
Ground floor, Clarence building
St Mary’s Hospital
Praed Street
London
W2 1NY

Our annual report

Our complaints department has begun to publish quarterly reports detailing service improvements we have made as a result of your feedback.

Read our latest annual report

Call for concern

Call for concern is a new 24/7 service that helps patients, relatives and carers get direct access to senior clinicians if they are concerned that ward staff aren’t recognising that a patient’s condition may be getting worse. This is only for patients staying in our hospitals.

Clinical deterioration is detected by clinical staff every day, using their own skills, and knowledge as well as digital and other early warning systems. However, friends and relatives, as well as patients themselves, may spot ‘soft signs’ of deterioration before it becomes apparent to staff.

Call for concern, enables patients and families to call our response team at any time of day with their worries. The response team, who already work closely with colleagues across our hospitals when a patient is very unwell, will assess the situation and take any action that’s needed.

The Call for concern service can be reached by calling: 020 3311 1114

How does Call for concern work?

When you call, you will be asked to pick your hospital site. This will put you through to the most appropriate person.

You will be asked:

Where are you calling from and who are you concerned about?
What are you most concerned about right now?
Are there any other healthcare staff on the ward that can help you until I get to see you or the patient?

The critical care outreach team or site nurse practitioners (at night) will prioritise the urgency of the call and will visit the patient on the ward to discuss the concern and assess the patient, if necessary.

When should I use Call for concern?

Call for concern should only be used after you have spoken to the nurse in charge or the doctor responsible for the patient’s care, and you still have concerns.

If you are a patient and feel that your condition is deteriorating
If you are a relative, friend or carer who has concerns about a hospital patient’s clinical condition deteriorating
There has been a change in clinical condition and you feel the ward team aren’t addressing the concern.
Who should I speak to about other concerns?

Please speak to the ward team around any concerns you have, these can be clinical or non-clinical. Call for concern is only for clinical concerns.

If you have spoken to the ward team and still have concerns (that are not related to your clinical condition), you can contact our patient advice and liaison service (PALS).

Making a formal complaint

If, despite our best efforts, we are not able to resolve your concerns informally with the staff caring for you or via PALS, you have the choice to make a formal complaint.

To make a complaint please email our complaints office at:

ICHC-TR.COMPLAINTS@NHS.NET or send a letter addressed to:
Complaints department
Fourth floor
Salton House
St Mary’s Hospital
Praed Street
London W2 1NY

Download our Easy read leaflet about making a formal complaint

Please bear in mind:

The chief executive has delegated the handling of complaints to the complaints department. Therefore, contacting the complaints department directly is the quickest way to get your complaint logged and responded to.
If you are contacting us on behalf of a relative or friend, we may need to obtain their consent to carry out an investigation due to patient confidentiality. You can download and complete this patient consent form and scan it or send it by post to us with your complaint.
If you would like to complain about the care of a person who is deceased, different rules apply. When you contact us to raise a formal complaint, we’ll explain the rules to you.
Complaints should be made within a year of the events concerned, or the date when you became aware of the problem. If your complaint dates back further than this and there were good reasons why you weren’t able to complain before, please contact us and we will let you know if we can still help you.
Any complaint you make about your care or the care a relative has received will in no way negatively affect any care you receive from us in the future. We don’t keep any correspondence about your complaint in your health records.

Please remember to include the following information in your written complaint:

Your, or the patient’s, name and address, email address, contact telephone number, date of birth and, if known, NHS or hospital number.
A list of any specific questions you would like us to address.
How you believe we can best resolve your complaint for you.

What happens after you have raised a formal complaint?

We will contact you within three working days of receiving your complaint to acknowledge it and agree with you how it can best be resolved.
We will do our best to find a resolution to your complaint, which you find acceptable. Sometimes a phone call from the manager in charge of the service area that you are raising a complaint about is enough or you may want an apology. Alternatively, you may prefer a full investigation and a written response. We will do our best to arrange any of these or other possible solutions for you. We will also agree a realistic individual timescale and give you a named point of contact for any additional enquiries that arise during the investigation process.
We will try to make the complaints process as simple as possible, and if you have a disability or need any other kind of adjustment, please tell us and we will do our best to help you.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your complaint

If you are unhappy with how your complaint has been handled please let us know. We can agree some other ways of dealing with your concerns. For instance, if you’ve had a response by letter we might be able to set up a meeting to talk about the things you are still unhappy about or we can look into your original complaint in more detail or request that a more senior staff member does so.

We will always try to find ways to resolve your concerns. However, if we have tried all reasonable means of resolving your concerns and you are still dissatisfied you can request an independent review by the Ombudsman. Find out about how to contact the Ombudsman.

Access free, independent support and advice about making an NHS complaint
There are various advocacy services who can support with making a complaint about NHS care or treatment. Below are links to three independent organisations who cover most London boroughs.

Pohwer website

Voiceability website

NHS Choices:

Last updated 12 Apr 2024
Author Nadine Silverside