"Nurse who called us through to endoscopy unit"

Dear Mrs Turnbull

Thank you for taking the time to leave feedback on your recent experience with us.

At Shepton Mallet NHS Treatment centre we aim to provide a high quality, individualised patient focused service ensuring every patient is treated with the care and respect they deserve (and which we would all want for ourselves) so I can only offer apologies if you found the questions of one staff member inappropriate.

It is our policy (as part of our patient safety checks to ensure we have the right patient for the right procedure), to always ask the patient to confirm what procedure they have attended for and what outcome they hoped to achieve. This enables us to assess if the patient has been made fully aware of the procedure and what it can and cannot achieve to ensure when they consent, they are making an informed choice. It is important however, that staff address their questions appropriately and I am sure if it had been explained to you why you were being asked, you would not have felt them inappropriate. The comment about losing weight whilst technically correct as this can improve symptoms, must be made in an appropriate manner and at a suitable time and I can see how this could be viewed as offensive when you had not had time to build a rapport with the staff member. Please accept our apologies for this miscommunication. I can confirm that this has been shared with the team and hope that your experience will be taken on board to prevent similar miscommunication issues.

It was lovely to hear that apart from this incident, you were very happy with the high quality of the care you received.

Kind regards

Trudy Craig-Patient Quality and Safety Manager

T: 01749 733612

Trudy.Craig@careuk.com