General Enquiries and FAQ's

General Enquiries

Before contacting us, check the following options to make sure you're in the right place:

• If you are looking for contact details for a consultant, you should call the main hospital switchboard on 01202 665511 and ask for their PA/Secretary or send an email to the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and ask us to forward your email on to their PA/Secretary.
• If you are looking for the phone number for a ward or department, call the main hospital switchboard on 01202 665511
• If your enquiry is about your obtaining your medical records, Click here to find out more information.

Frequently Asked Questions

• If I need to cancel an appointment who do I speak to? - Call 01202 665511 ext 3995
• How do I access my health records? - Click here for information on how to access medical records.
• What do I need to bring into hospital with me? Or What do I do if I find my property is lost or missing?  Click here to see our leaflet that tells you what your need to bring if you are staying overnight in hospital, how to keep your property safe and what to do if your property is damaged or missing.
• If I am unhappy with the care my relative or friend is receiving what should I do? In the first instance you should ask to speak to the Ward Sister/Charge Nurse (or their deputy) on the ward. Alternatively you may ask to speak the Matron or Manager who is responsible for the ward or department.
• Who can I talk to about how I am feeling when in hospital? Our hospital chaplaincy team supports people of all faiths, as well as people who do not have a particular religious belief, but who would like someone to talk to. Ask a member of staff to call the Chaplaincy team if you would like more information. Click here for more

Communicating with patients during Covid-19 outbreak

Visiting in our hospitals is now severely restricted. This is to try to limit the spread of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) as much as possible. The updated guidance can be found here.

We recognise how difficult it is, to be asked to stay at home when your relative is in hospital, and appreciate the additional distress this will bring to many families. We want to support you at this time and suggest the following:    

Communicate directly with your relative

Use your mobile device so you can keep in touch with your relative as often as you want. You can text at any time but please do not call after 9.00pm as this is likely to disturb other patients.

Many of our patients have a bedside telephone system, operated by Hospedia Ltd.  Outbound calls made to any number starting with 01, 02 or 03 are free. Outbound calls to mobile numbers are free for the first two minutes.

Please note that any incoming calls to the Hospedia phone will be charged at a premium rate.

Keeping in touch

We have set up a dedicated email address so you can send your relative a message or attach a letter or a drawing from a younger member of the family.

When emailing, please tell us your relative’s full name, address or date of birth and the ward they are on. Then add your message and/or attach letters or pictures. If you want to send a photograph, please restrict this to one.

We will print your messages (in black & white) and if we receive your email before 12.00pm on a weekday, we will deliver them to the ward on the same day.

The email address is: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Hospital Radio Bedside

The Hospital Radio Bedside operates around the clock and is run entirely by volunteers. You can listen online and make a request for a patient by emailing: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Carer Support Service

Does a vulnerable or elderly person rely on your unpaid help for everyday tasks? We understand that unpaid carers are really feeling the strain at this difficult time. If your cared-for person is admitted to Poole Hospital during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic, please call our Carer Support Service on 01202 448714 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

If you have any questions regarding the above or need any help, then please call our Patient Experience Team on 0300 019 8499 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

If you call, please leave a message and someone will call you back.  Messages and emails are accessed regularly between 9.30am and 4.30pm on week days.  There is no service at weekends.

Making a Complaint

If there is an aspect of your care or some service that you haven’t been satisfied with, please let us know as soon as possible.

The Trust is committed to working with you to undertake an open and thorough investigation into your concerns and achieving a satisfactory resolution. However, we recognise that making a complaint can be difficult and so we want to ensure you have the right level of information and support throughout the process.This is explained in the leaflet ‘Have Your Say’.

Contacting us

UHD: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or telephone 0300 019 8499

If you prefer, you can write to Laura Northeast, Head of Patient Experience, or alternatively, to the Trust's Chief Executive, Siobhan Harrington, at the address below.

Patient Experience Centre
University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust
Poole Hospital
Longfleet Road
Poole
Dorset
BH15 2JB

More help with your complaint

The Advocacy People: 0330 440 9000

NHS Dorset: 0130 536 8926

What happens next?

Many concerns and questions can be resolved quickly and easily. Our Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) will listen to your concerns and discuss how best to support you in finding answers or to consider alternative solutions through working with the staff involved in your care.

The PALS team are also a gateway to the complaints process. If the team believes there is a way to resolve your concerns fairly and quickly, as an alternative to undertaking a more formal complaint investigation, they will discuss this with you. The team will use their experience to explore options and make suggestions to help resolve the issues.

Alternatively, a more formal process of investigating your complaint may be the best option. Or this may be your preferred option.

Whether your complaint is resolved informally or is the subject of a more formal investigation, where it is found that something did not meet the expected standard we will tell you what the team or service are going to do to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen again.

Investigating your complaint

You will be contacted by one of our team who will have been assigned to advise you how best to proceed. Where possible, we would prefer to speak with you before we start the investigation so we can:

• Talk to you about your complaint and check that we understand the key issues and how they have affected you
• Tell you how to contact independent help from The Advocacy People
• Find out what you are expecting from our investigation and how best we can resolve your concerns
• Agree with you the issues we will look at, explain how we will gather all the information we need and how long we think this will take

Other things you should know

• At UHD we support the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) approach to acceptable behaviour. We value the importance of effective communication and as such we adhere to a commitment of acceptable behaviour which can be found here: Our Commitment to Acceptable behaviour
• A complaint should be made within 12 months of the event happening or within 12 months of you becoming aware of the impact of the event.
• If you are a relative or visitor, it may be necessary for us to know the patient is happy for you to act on their behalf. If your enquiry relates to confidential information about the patient’s care or treatment, we will usually ask the patient to complete a consent form so we can share the outcome of the investigation with you. This is simply because we have a duty to protect every patient's right to confidentiality concerning their clinical treatment

What we will do next

Once we have all the information we need, we will carefully consider what happened and compare this to what should have happened. We may need to contact you again to check out other things so that we can conclude our investigation. Where it is found that something did not meet the expected standard, we will tell you what the team or service are going to do to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen again.

The chief executive, Siobhan Harrington, or a member of her executive team will write to you explaining the outcome of the investigation. We aim for the written response to your complaint to be open and thorough by explaining what happened, apologising for anything that fell below the expected standard and telling you about any improvements the service has or will make as a consequence of your complaint.

If you do not feel that the Trust's letter has answered your questions properly, please contact the person named in your reply letter, explaining why you are not happy and what you would like the Trust to do.

When the Trust’s complaint process has come to an end, we will explain this to you. If you’re not happy with how we’ve dealt with your complaint, and would like to take the matter further, you can contact the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. The Ombudsman makes final decisions on complaints that have not been resolved by the NHS.

Patient Experience Improvements

What we’ve done to improve patient experience

Experience of Care Week is an annual international initiative from 23-27 April that celebrates the improvement of experiences of care in the NHS. The initiative is led by NHS England and NHS Improvement.

To recognise #Expofcare Week, below are just some examples of the great work that happens at our hospital. These will be tweeted out every day until 27 April and they are all available to see below.

• New outreach service
• Maternity high dependency care
• Point of care foundation training
• Improving the quality and quantity of patients’ sleep
• Carer support
• National Play in Hospital Week
• Smoking in pregnancy service

If you have any good examples of patient care, that you, family or a friend have received at Poole Hospital, let us know by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

If you have recently been an inpatient at Poole Hospital and you would like to participate in a survey, to help us improve the service, then please click on the following link.