PALS & Complaints Officer

PALS & Complaints Officer

Job Overview

To contribute to the delivery of an outstanding experience for all service users and their families, by supporting the resolution of enquiries, PALS concerns and complaints within agreed timescales, and the Trust’s wider Patient Experience engagement and feedback processes.

Key Result Areas

• Effectively manage complaints in accordance with national guidance and local Trust policies and procedures.
• Facilitate speedy and informal resolution of enquiries raised by service users, their families and carers through liaison with Trust staff and other agencies.
• Provide information, advice and support to service users, their families and carers raising concerns through PALS, including information about local voluntary and statutory agencies.
• Provide high quality guidance and support to divisions on resolving complaints and concerns, supporting staff in complex cases.
• Take a person‑centred approach to each case, ensuring internal processes are applied in a way that the patient understands and supports their needs.
• Identify trends and themes arising from complaints and to escalat[e] this to senior managers for consideration.
• Record, progress and assist in case managing complaints and concerns to achieve accurate and timely responses, ensuring good communication with the complainant throughout.

Detailed Responsibilities

• Act as one of the Complaints/PALS Officers, dealing with a caseload of formal complaints, PALS concerns and enquiries.
• Respond to patients, their carers or relatives by telephone, email and face to face, investigating issues and involving key staff to reach a satisfactory resolution.
• Work closely with patients/service users to understand concerns/complaints, desired outcomes and discuss options and timescales in line with Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) principles and NHS Complaint Regulations.
• Advise patients who wish to formally complain of the Trust’s complaints process and signpost or offer independent advocacy services.
• Handle complaints and enquiries in a polite, sympathetic and empathetic way, ensuring confidence.
• Case‑manage concerns and all complaints allocated by the Complaints & PALS Manager, working to national and local protocols, policies and procedures.
• Maintain confidential records in line with Trust policy, assist with monitoring and evaluation of complaints in accordance with Caldicott recommendations and the Data Protection Act, and refer all enquiries concerning MPs and the PHSO to a senior manager.
• Act as frontline point of contact for patients, carers, service users and key partners including GPs.
• Log accurately all contacts and record actions taken to reach a satisfactory conclusion.
• Identify concerns that meet the thresholds of Trust policies such as safeguarding, serious incidents, duty of candour and to escalat[e] them to the Complaints & PALS Manager.
• Support the Patient Experience agenda and strategy alongside wider Nursing and Quality agendas.
• Maintain basic knowledge of Trust policies, procedures and developments.
• Build and maintain good relationships with local partners and stakeholders.
• Support collection of patient experience data, both electronic and paper based.
• Attend complaints resolution meetings and other meetings as required.
• Ensure that service users, their relatives and carers have access to information about the complaints process and PALS.
• Provide high quality and high level support and advice to divisions in handling complaints.
• Obtain and receive all documentation relating to each complaint or PALS concern from divisions, scrutinising the Radar record to ensure complete records and that all issues are addressed.
• Monitor timescales for dealing with complaints and PALS concerns, identifying delays and causes for delays, and highlighting these to the Complaints & PALS Manager.
• Additional duties as required / detailed by Patient Experience Manager in relation to supporting the team.

Person Specification

Education / Training / Qualifications

• Essential: Previous NHS Experience, Customer Service Experience, Experience of working in the NHS Complaints Process.
• Desirable: Educated to degree level or equivalent, minimum NVQ Level 3 qualification or equivalent.

Work Experience

• Essential criteria: Previous relevant experience in a customer‑focused environment.
• Experience of dealing with the public face‑to‑face and handling difficult behaviour and distressed, vulnerable people.
• Experience of working in a busy office environment.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Ability to establish and maintain strong relationships.
• Able to problem‑solve complex situations.
• Able to work flexibly and prioritise needs and requirements of individual team members.
• Able to cope with meeting deadlines and prioritising challenging workload.
• Able to remain calm under pressure and communicate effectively with angry or upset patients/carers.
• Able to cope with distressing accounts from patients and carers and show genuine concern and empathy.
• Resilient and able to manage own levels of stress.

Knowledge / Skills / Abilities

• Essential: Proven negotiating and influencing skills, excellent resourcefulness and problem‑solving skills, tactful, considerate and sensitive in complex situations, ability to manage multiple requests and prioritise tasks, ability to think clearly and work quickly under pressure, initiative, computer proficiency (Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel, Teams, Radar), knowledge of governance procedures including NHS complaints procedure, Data Protection and Patient Experience Agenda, previous NHS experience in a patient focused environment, physical dexterity for keyboard skills.
• Desirable: Knowledge of medical/healthcare terminology.

Personal Qualities / Special Circumstances

• Respond to stressful unpredictable situations.

Other Information

North Bristol NHS Trust values all people as individuals. We aim to be an anti‑discriminatory organisation and are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We welcome applicants from under‑represented groups.

At North Bristol Trust (NBT), we know diverse and inclusive environments lead to happier and healthier teams and improved patient care and outcomes. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong. We particularly encourage applications from candidates who are currently under‑represented in NBT’s workforce at Band 8a and above.

The successful applicant(s) will normally commence at the minimum of the scale unless they have previous NHS service at the same band. Progression through the scale is by annual increments.

We do not reimburse travel expenses relating to interview attendance.

Please note that the successful applicant(s) will undergo stringent pre‑employment checks prior to commencement in post.