Decision Report 201508144

Summary

Mrs C was referred for a colonoscopy for bowel cancer screening and was asked to contact the hospital to book this in. Mrs C contacted the board to raise concerns that there were no arrangements for her to see a consultant beforehand. She was also concerned to discover the procedure was booked with a nurse rather than a consultant. After further correspondence, the board arranged an appointment for Mrs C with a consultant to discuss the procedure. While Mrs C was dissatisfied that this delayed the procedure for three weeks, she attended the appointment and chose to go ahead with the procedure with the consultant. After the procedure Mrs C complained to the board about the attitude of the male nurse who prepared her for the procedure, the procedure itself, and the board's communication about this.

The board issued two written responses to Mrs C's complaint and met with her and her MSP to discuss the outstanding issues. The board apologised for some aspects of the procedure, including that the male nurse had touched Mrs C when demonstrating the procedure and that another member of staff had entered the room during the procedure to access a storeroom.

After taking independent medical and nursing advice we did not uphold Mrs C's complaints. The advice we received was that the board's care, treatment and communication were reasonable and they had apologised where appropriate. We were concerned that the steps taken by the board may not be sufficient to address the privacy issues raised and we made a further recommendation about this. While we considered some aspects of the board's complaints handling could have been improved, we found their response was reasonable and in line with Scottish Government guidance.

Recommendations

We recommended that the board:

• consider whether there is a recurring problem with staff entering the endoscopy suite to access the storeroom during procedures and take steps to address this.