Learning from Complaints: the benefits to organisations of listening to uncomfortable truths [Audio]

Speaker(s): Dr Alex Gillespie, Dr Tom Reader | Public services such as healthcare receive large volumes of complaints. Traditionally these have been seen as something to manage or even hide. However, from a social psychological standpoint, listening to complaints can potentially provide independent, practical, and unique insights. This lecture reports evidence using the Healthcare Complaints Analysis Tool, which is the first reliable tool for systematically analyzing and benchmarking the severity of complaints received by hospitals. It shows that complaints from patients and families highlight systemic problems in the provision of healthcare and are associated with hospital-level mortality rates. This evidence supports the idea that complaints have high validity and can be used both as an early warning system for identifying systemic institutional failures, and as a catalyst for organisational learning. Alex Gillespie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological and Be