42 - Why am I waiting?

A member contacted Dental Protection having received a letter of complaint from a patient. The patient had been a long-standing patient of the practice and regularly returned every six months for her check up. Unfortunately when the original letter of complaint arrived, the dentist was about to go on holiday and rather than responding straight away with a simple acknowledgement, he chose to leave the letter in his briefcase to be dealt with on his return. Like most of us returning from holiday, he was confronted with an enormous pile of mail and rather than spending time opening all of it, and prioritising it, he decided that the needs of his patients that day were more pressing. Although he genuinely felt that he was always responsive to the needs of his parents, by the time the mail was finally opened, two further letters of complaint had been received from the same patient who by now was positively irate.

As it happens, the original complaint was relatively simple to deal with. The patient had arrived at the practice a little earlier than normal and finding the reception desk staff at lunch she went and sat in the waiting room. Unfortunately when the receptionist returned she failed to notice that anybody was sitting in the waiting room and simply assumed that this particular patient was not going to attend. It was some fifty minutes before the mistake was recognised at the reception desk and only then because the patient asked if the dentist had been delayed? At the time, the dentist dismissed the problem by suggesting that it was really the patient's fault for not speaking up. Not surprisingly, the patient was quite upset and left the practice muttering that she would seek her dental treatment elsewhere.

The letter of complaint that arrived two days after the waiting room incident was very conciliatory and simply asked why the situation had arisen. For obvious reasons, the failure to reply, even with a simple acknowledgement, did nothing to maintain a conciliatory mood and by the time the third letter of complaint arrived, litigation was already being threatened to obtain compensation for the wasted time.

The matter was quickly resolved with a profuse apology and a detailed explanation offered in a letter that had been drafted by Dental Protection. The patient and her family did not pursue the complaint any further, but nor did they return to the practice.

Recognition of patients as individuals can significantly reduce the impact of trivial administrative mishaps.