Ding B, Su X, Zhuang J, Cai N, Ou Y, Jiang H, Jiang H, Hu J. Six Years of Complaints Issued by Patients at a Laser Treatment Center in a Plastic Surgery Hospital.
PLASTIC AND RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY-GLOBAL OPEN 2023;
11:e5206. [PMID:
37600835 PMCID:
PMC10435038 DOI:
10.1097/gox.0000000000005206]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/23/2023] [Accepted: 07/07/2023] [Indexed: 08/22/2023]
Abstract
Background
Patient complaints can provide valuable feedback regarding the objective deficiencies of medical services. There are few studies on the complaints of patients receiving photoelectric therapy, so this study aims to understand the expectations and requirements of patients by analyzing the complaints of patients receiving photoelectric therapy.
Methods
The complaints of patients who underwent photoelectric therapy were retrospectively examined. Authors plan to analyze treatment items, complaint contents, appeals, time trend regarding the number of complaints, and economic compensation.
Results
Fifty-four patients were involved in the study in total, and all of them were included. According to the standardized coding classification of complaints by Reader et al., the number of clinical, management and relationship complaints were 36 (59.02%), 14 (22.95%), and 11 (18.03%), respectively. These were divided among the categories of quality (31.15%), safety (27.87%), institutional issues (22.95%), communication (8.20%), and humaneness/caring (9.84%); with the most common subcategories involving treatment (31.15%) and safety incidents (24.59%). The patients' demands involved 20 cases (32.26%) requesting a refund of their medical expenses, 16 (25.81%) issuing a warning, 15 (24.19%) requesting compensation for loss, 10 (16.13%) requiring free repair or consultation, and 1 (1.61%) demanding an apology. Eventually, financial compensation was provided to the patients in eight of the cases. At a significance level of P = 0.05, even if the number of annual complaints increased over time, the increasing trend was not significant.
Conclusions
Patient complaints in photoelectric therapy were most commonly clinical in nature. Specifically, quality and safety concerns are the main complaints.
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