PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service)

PALS provides support for patients, families, carers and staff.

Visiting / opening times

  • Monday to Friday (Closed bank holidays) 08:00 AM 04:00 PM

When you need advice, have concerns, or don’t know where to turn, PALS will:

  • Offer advice and support
  • Help sort out problems quickly
  • Assist with any problems relating to language or disability
  • Provide information about health services
  • Listen to concerns, suggestions and queries
  • Point you in the right direction
  • Explain how to make a formal complaint or provide leaflets explaining the process
  • Signpost external advocacy, if required
  • Explain how you may access your medical records.

Hearing about the experience you had at our hospitals is very important because it enables us to pass compliments to our staff on your behalf and make improvements if we have not met your expectations.

If you would prefer to speak with someone outside of the department you are concerned with you can contact the Patient Experience Team on 01302 642764, 01302 642767, or email dbth.pals.dbh@nhs.net.

Written communications can also be sent to:

Patient Advice and Liaison Service
Doncaster Royal Infirmary
Armthorpe Road
Doncaster
DN2 5LT


Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate

Supporting you after a distressing experience (an adverse outcome) during your maternity and/or neonatal care.

If you had your maternity and/or neonatal care in South Yorkshire or Bassetlaw, who is your Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate (MNISA)?

Abbey Harris

Who can Abbey support?

  • Abbey might be able to support you if:
    • your baby died before or during labour, after more than 24 weeks of pregnancy (known as stillbirth).
    • your baby died within 28 days of being born.
    • the person who gave birth died.
    • you had a hysterectomy (your womb was removed) within 6 weeks of giving birth, and you did not expect this to happen.
    • you were cared for on the Intensive Care Unit or High Dependency Unit, and you did not expect this to happen.
    • you were told your baby has or might have a brain injury.
  • It doesn’t matter if this happened recently or some time ago.
  • You don’t need to be sure that something went wrong during the care of you or your loved one.
  • Abbey will help make sure your voice is heard. She will make sure that you are supported.
  • You don’t have to use Abbey’s service if you don’t want to, and you can stop contact with Abbey at any time without giving a reason.

How you can contact Abbey:

Abbey’s service is free. She can arrange for an interpreter if needed.

Call or text 07811 796494

Email syicb.advocate@nhs.net

You can also speak to any health care worker involved in your maternity or neonatal care. They can ask Abbey to contact you.

Abbey can support you by:

  • finding the best people for you to speak to about your experience. She can come to meetings with you.
  • explaining ways you can find out more about what happened during your care.
  • helping you to make sense of how hospitals might look at what happened.
  • helping you to tell someone you are unhappy about your care, and/or that you want to ask more questions.
  • finding more support for you if you need it.

Abbey can give you information about other services if she thinks they are better placed to help you.

Will Abbey tell other people what you say?

  • What you choose to tell Abbey is confidential. This means she won’t share what you say to her with anyone else unless you say she can.
  • If Abbey is worried about your safety, or someone else’s safety, she would have to tell someone what you shared with her. Even then, Abbey would talk about this with you first.
  • Sometimes, one of Abbey’s team might help her to check if there are any messages from you that she needs to reply to. This person must follow the same rules as Abbey does around sharing your information.

More about Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advocates (MNISAs)

  • Abbey does not work for any of the hospitals in South Yorkshire or Bassetlaw. This means she is independent of them. Abbey works for the NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (SY ICB). They are in charge of all care which happens in your area.
  • The MNISA role is part of a new plan across England which will run until March 2025. After this, the NHS will look at whether the plan has been helpful to those who have had distressing experiences during their maternity and/or neonatal care.
  • If Abbey is still supporting you in March 2025, she will work out a new plan with you and her team. They will make sure you carry on getting the support you need.
  • The plan to introduce MNISAs was put into place because of important reports (like the Ockenden Review) in some parts of England. These reports show that those who had distressing experiences in their maternity and/or neonatal care in the past were not always heard. Care did not always get better, and this needs to change.

What happens if you are unhappy with the MNISA service?

For more information about the South Yorkshire Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate, please visit: https://southyorkshire.icb.nhs.uk/MNISA


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