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Shared decision making in a healthcare setting is about involving patients and their families in decisions about their clinical care.  

Not only does this foster a more compassionate, effective healthcare service, it is vital for patient safety.  By listening to and working with patients, a service is more likely to understand and meet their needs, and be responsive when safety problems are raised.

We often receive complaints from patients and their families that they should have had more involvement in their care. Click on the headings to read summaries of some of our investigations into these complaints:

The Belfast Trust told a woman it would not assess her son for ADHD until he was six years old. 

We found the Trust should have explained its reasons for not doing so more clearly, but acknowledged its timescale was a symptom of the wider demands currently placed on the health service. 

A patient was prescribed diazepam after he complained to his GP about feeling unwell. 

We asked the surgery to apologise after he was later found to have suffered five strokes in the space of a week. 

We found that a pre-admission assessment for a care home resident did not accurately record her mobility, meaning that the home was ill-prepared for her arrival.

The Southern Trust should have carried out further tests on a patient to see if she was suitable for hip surgery. 

We found that a patient with fibromyalgia was treated appropriately by the Northern Trust.

Although the Trust failed to keep proper records of her treatment, we did not consider this impacted on her care.

A woman claimed that her daughter’s development was held back by the South Eastern Trust. We upheld parts of the complaint, finding that the Trust's failings led to a loss of opportunity for the child and caused her mother upset and distress. 

We found the Belfast Trust’s failure to ensure a patient was fit for surgery, and to consider other forms of treatment for his cancer, may have led to his untimely death.

A complainant believed that the surgery she received in Craigavon Area Hospital caused her injury and led to ongoing symptoms which were not properly treated.

We investigated a complaint that the Belfast Trust failed to identify and treat a physical cause for a patient's symptoms which developed after surgery to remove her thyroid.