Patients

Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS)

How can PALS help?

The PALS team at St George's Healthcare is a patient friendly, easy-to-access service designed to provide a personal contact to assist patients, relatives and carers.

PALS can offer you on-the-spot advice and information when you have queries or difficulties regarding our services or the care you have received.

They will listen to your concerns and help you find ways of resolving them.

They will also take note of what you tell them to help us improve our services for patients.

PALS charter

The St George's Healthcare Patient Advice and Liaison Service is here to help patients and their relatives and carers find a speedy and effective solution to any problems they may encounter.

They can also give you up to date information about the services available throughout the Trust.

If you contact PALS for assistance or advice, the PALS team will:

Advise you of the options available to you and help you to find the best way of resolving your problem
Deal with your problems in confidence and only pass on information to other people or departments with your permission
Keep you advised at all times of the progress of any action you ask us to take on your behalf.
Contact you in person or by telephone within one working day of your request.
Use anonymised information from our contact with you to improve hospital services for the future
Not access your medical records or obtain information about you from staff without your permission.
Ask you if you were happy with the assistance we gave and ask for suggestions for making the PALS service better.
Ensure that no person who contacts The Patient Advice and Liaison Service will receive less favourable treatment from PALS on the grounds of their sex, marital status, race, colour, creed, religion, physical disability, mental health, learning difficulty, age or sexual orientation

If you have problems or difficulties

If you have a problem which has not been sorted out on the ward or in a department, PALS will help you to resolve it, or refer you to the appropriate person who will be able to assist you further.

Should you need to speak to a particular member of staff, PALS can contact the relevant member of staff and ask them to contact you.

The PALS team can also help to explain the complaints process and refer you to the complaints department when necessary as well as outside advocacy services should you need them.

If you require an interpreter

If your first language is not English, PALS will be able to help and will work with the department you are attending to arrange for an interpreter to assist you.

How to contact PALS

You can contact PALS in the following ways:

Visit the PALS office
You can visit the 9:00am to 5:00pm, Monday to Friday.

The PALS office can be found in the main corridor between Grosvenor and Lanesborough Wing near the lift foyer.
Ask a member of staff
Please ask a member of staff on the ward or clinic you are attending. They will help put you in contact with the PALS team
Telephone
By telephone simply dial extension number 2453 if you are calling from any of the internal telephones from within the hospital.

If you are calling from outside the hospital, please call the PALS office direct on 020 8725 2453.

You can call this number outside normal working hours: a member of the PALS team will return your call within 24 hours or by the next working day.
Email
Please email the PALS team on pals@stgeorges.nhs.uk
[You must read the trust's email correspondence disclaimer before using this service]

If you are not happy

If you are not happy with the help you receive from the PALS, please contact the Trust's Patient Experience Manager.

PALS Office
St George's Hospital
Blackshaw Road
London
SW17 0QT

Email: pals@stgeorges.nhs.uk
[You must read the trust's email correspondence disclaimer before using this service]

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This is to inform you of the risks involved when sending and receiving personal information electronically.

Risks:

Any information transferred out of the trust’s network is NOT SECURE
Your personal information could be intercepted by other family members or friends who have access to your email account
If you are using a work email account, your employer may have access to these emails and they may be stored and backed up on their system
Your personal information will be open to access by cyber products that have the ability to intercept emails without authority
The trust cannot be held responsible for the security of your personal information coming into and going out of our network in this case
There is no guarantee that the information sent has not been changed before receipt
The confidential email(s) sent could be forwarded to other members of the public
Your personal information will not be encrypted or sent in a locked file format
You will not be informed of the exact date the information is sent. It is your responsibility to retrieve the information

Trust assurance:

A review of the information requested will be carried out and the trust reserves the right to refuse to email information if deemed inappropriate or sensitive
A copy of any information sent will be retained in the department file (NOT in your medical records unless you specifically request this) and the origin of the information will be verifiable
Information will only be sent from an NHS network email – the address will end with @stgeorges.nhs.uk or @nhs.net

By corresponding via email you accept and agree to the following statement:

I agree that St. George’s Healthcare can send confidential personal information to me via email. I have read and understood the risks associated with this, as detailed above.

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