Profile of the most common complaints for five health professions in Australia.

ConclusionsThe risk of a complaint is low, but varies by profession and demographics. The types of complaints also vary by profession and demographics. Differences between professions is most likely driven by their different work tasks and work environments.What is already known on this subject?Although complaints are summarised annually from state and national health regulators, no overall national summary of complaints across professions exists. Thus, it is difficult to examine which complaints are most common, how professions differ from each other or what factors may be associated with risk and type of complaint. Previous studies have primarily focused on a single profession, such as medicine, where, for example, the number of prior complaints, sex, doctor speciality and age have been found to be associated with recurrent complaints.What does this paper add?This paper is the first of this kind to provide a national summary of all complaints from five of the most common health professions in Australia. We found that regardless of profession, men were at least twice as likely to have a complaint made against them than women. We also found that the types of complaint differed between men and women. There were similarities across professions for the most common types of complaints, but clear differences between professions were also noted. Not surprising, clinical care was typically the most common type of complaint for the five professions, but somewhat surprising was the in...

Source: Australian Health Review - October 28, 2019 Category: Hospital Management Authors: Walton M, Kelly PJ, Chiarella EM, Carney T, Bennett B, Nagy M, Pierce S Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research