Experience is Clinical
FLI#4.1: Environment Matters
With years of experience and ongoing trend analysis, ISCAS continues to categorise complaints and identify their underlying causes. One finding still catches many clinicians off guard: environmental complaints remain consistently high.
In the full year 2025 – 2026, ISCAS recorded 62 Stage 3 heads of complaint relating to accommodation and clinical issues (non-medical and nursing). Together, these accounted for 20% of all heads of complaint.
The outcomes are telling:
- 50% of accommodation complaints were upheld or partially upheld
- Fewer than 25% of non-medical and nursing clinical issues were upheld or partially upheld
As highlighted in a previous post, when people are dissatisfied, they often raise additional concerns beyond their primary complaint – issues that may not initially have met the threshold but become relevant in context.
What sits underneath this?
Patients experience care as a whole:
- Cleanliness
- Noise
- Organisation
👉 These factors directly shape confidence in clinical care.
If the environment feels wrong, trust in treatment drops.
For healthcare professionals, this is a useful reminder: perception of care isn’t built on clinical outcomes alone – it’s influenced by everything surrounding them.