It means a great deal to our teams when patients and families take the time to share positive feedback. If you have received care that made a difference to you, we would love to hear about it.

We make sure all compliments and messages of thanks are shared with the staff and managers involved, so they know the impact their care has had.

You can choose to leave this feedback anonymously or you can fill in your contact details.

Share a compliment

If something is worrying you, we encourage you to speak to a senior member of staff on the ward or in the department in the first instance. They will do their best to support you and address your concerns as quickly as possible.

If you would prefer to speak to someone who is not directly involved in your care, or if you feel your concerns have not been resolved, you can contact our PALS team for advice and support.

If your concern relates to a patient who is currently on one of our wards, we will make sure it is shared promptly with the senior nurse or appropriate senior manager. They will contact you to discuss your concerns and agree any actions needed to help resolve the situation.

PALS is a confidential service and will help you get support and advice should you have concerns about your, or a patient’s, care or experience.

They will :

• listen to your concerns or complaints
• liaise with the relevant staff, to try to resolve your concerns as quickly as possible
• if necessary, advise you on the NHS Complaints Procedure and how to contact the Complaints Team.

For more information about how to make a complaint, read our PALS Leaflet.

An easy read version of the leaflet is also available.

If your concern relates to something that has already happened and needs a more detailed investigation, you may wish to make a formal complaint. In line with NHS Complaints Regulations, formal complaints should be made within 12 months of the event, or within 12 months of becoming aware of the issue.

You can submit a formal complaint in whichever way feels easiest for you, via the contact details listed above or by using our online form:

Raising a complaint

Once we receive your complaint, the Complaints Team will carefully review the details with you so that we are able to provide a written response within an agreed timeframe, usually between 45–60 working days. We are committed to listening, understanding, and taking appropriate action to resolve your concerns.

We know that raising a complaint can be difficult and that many people are using AI tools (such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, etc.) to help write their complaint.

Although AI tools can help organise your thoughts, AI-generated complaints can often be complex, lengthy, and may include inaccurate medical terms or legal jargon. Overly complex complaints can sometimes lose sight of what is important to you and cause delays.

We would like to reassure you that we take all complaints seriously, and you do not need to use legal language, technical terms, or provide long documents for us to investigate your concerns.

We would like to hear about your experience in your own words. Simple, clear language that explains what happened to you will always be more helpful than complicated, formal writing. This will help ensure that we investigate the key issues and that our response is patient-centred and our resolution is personal to your experience.

If you are having difficulty raising your complaint, a member of the Complaints Team can arrange a telephone call or a face-to-face meeting to discuss your experience and summarise the issues. We can be contacted either by telephone on 0161 922 4466 or by email at palsandcomplaints@tgh.nhs.uk 

You can also seek support from the local health advocacy service, VoiceAbility. VoiceAbility can be contacted either by telephone on 0330 303 1660 or email helpline@voiceability.org.

To get the best results while making sure your complaint still reflects your own experience, try to keep your AI prompts focused on what happened and how it made you feel. The Publice Service Ombudsman has drafted prompts that can be used with AI to assist you with drafting your complaint. A prompt is a question or instruction that you use in an AI tool to help it produce the information or text you need.

Prompt suggestion 1:

I need to clearly explain what happened on [date] when [describe the situation]. Here are the details: [provide all the facts and circumstances]. Help me organise these into a clear structure that shows what happened first, second, third and so on.

Prompt suggestion 2:

Help me describe what happened in simple, clear language: [describe each issue in detail, including who was involved, what they said or did, and when it happened]. Help me express this clearly while keeping it in my own voice.

Prompt suggestion 3:

Rewrite the text below as a clear, polite complaint. Use only the information I have provided. Do not add or invent new facts. Be concise and professional, but not too formal. Include a closing paragraph suggesting how I would like the complaint to be resolved.

Do not ask AI to add legal arguments, use formal legal language or reference laws to try and make your complaint sound more ‘official’. It is also important to check any AI-generated text to make sure it reflects your own personal experience and contains accurate facts.

Complaints that raise multiple concerns, include extensive supporting information, or cover matters beyond your direct experience may require further discussion to agree the key issues for investigation. This helps ensure our investigation remains focused on the matters most important to you and enables us to provide a meaningful response.

Where a complaint contains a large number of individual points, we may group related concerns into themes and investigate these collectively. We cannot guarantee that every individual point will receive a separate response where this would be disproportionate. Investigations may take longer where concerns span multiple services, departments or periods of care, regardless of whether AI has been used.

It is important to remember the risks of sharing your information with AI tools. Providers of these tools may use it to train their AI systems and may process it in different countries. Avoid entering sensitive personal information unless you are confident about how it will be used and protected.

If you would like help to raise a concern or make a complaint, you can contact your local Independent Complaints Health Advocacy service. This is a free and confidential service that can guide you through the process and offer support.

For people living in Tameside & Glossop, or other areas covered by their service, VoiceAbility can provide this support. You can contact them:

By email: helpline@voiceability.org

By phone: 0300 303 1660

More information, including how to find your local service, is available on the VoiceAbility Advocacy and involvement website.

If you are looking for general health advice or information, Healthwatch England can also help. 

We have a detailed policy and procedure for dealing with complaints.

Our complaints procedure is based on the NHS complaints procedures, details of which are on the NHS website: NHS Complaints Procedure

You can obtain independent assistance with your complaint and Independent Complaints Advocacy from VoiceAbility via phone on 0300 303 1660, www.voiceability.org or e-mail helpline@voiceability.org.

If you need support with making a complaint about NHS care or treatment the Independent Complaints Advocacy Service (ICA) is a free service that can assist you. ICA can provide you with advice on how to make a complaint and help you write your letter of complaint. The service can also speak to the hospital or service on your behalf. You can call ICA at the Manchester Advocacy Hub on 0161 834 6069 or email: advocacy@gaddum.org.uk  or write to them at The Gaddum Centre, Gaddum House, 6 Great Jackson Street, Manchester, M15 4AX.