Doctors ignore majority of patient feedback

Only one in five doctors read comments directly concerning them, as research finds that patient feedback about the performance of doctors is ignored by the vast majority of the profession.

Healthcare services use a number of methods to collect information on patient experiences, including surveys and Patient Participation Groups, and policymakers have pushed for greater use of online feedback in addition to traditional sources.

Published in the Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, the survey involved 1,001 GPs and hospital doctors across the UK, finding that just 27.7 per cent of doctors were aware of feedback online about an episode of care that they had been involved in, while only 20.5 per cent of doctors were aware of feedback about them as an individual specifically.

Those figures rose to 21 per cent and 11.1 per cent for nurses.

Furthermore, the majority of doctors did not encourage patients to leave feedback and only 38 per cent felt that it was useful in improving services. The survey also highlighted that healthcare staff were more wary of feedback on social media, with 65.4 per cent of doctors feeling that feedback on social media is generally negative.

Helen Atherton, from Warwick Medical School, said: “We saw a lack of awareness from healthcare professionals of when feedback had been left about the care they delivered, whether as an individual or team. Overall, awareness and use by doctors is low.

"But we are seeing that doctors are much more negative about online feedback than nurses, and more so with GPs. There’s a real need that if NHS organisations are collecting this data that they need to be communicating it to frontline staff, because it’s pointless for the patients if their message isn’t getting through.”