Our hospital consultants are noted for many things - but shyness is not one of them. This makes it all the more puzzling that this week's fierce criticism of their attitude to patients' complaints and their record-keeping has elicited little or nothing by way of reply.

The condemnation of the "atrocious" record-keeping in our hospitals has also been greeted with a great silence.

The criticism came from the Ombudsman, Mr Kevin Murphy, when he addressed the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Strategic Management Initiative.

Mr Murphy has the power to investigate how patients' complaints are treated by health board hospitals. To his own obvious disgust he is not allowed to act in relation to public voluntary hospitals - hospitals owned by religious orders or charitable trusts but financed almost entirely by the taxpayer.

Speaking in Leinster House on Tuesday, Mr Murphy laid out his disturbing findings on how doctors deal with complaints.

"It has been my experience that health professionals, particularly doctors and consultants, do not engage wholeheartedly with patients' complaints," he said.

"In several recent complaints made to my office, I observed a marked reluctance on the part of the relevant consultant to engage in the complaint process."

Perhaps consultants have not been rushing to their own defence over these remarks because Mr Murphy is right.

The Medical Defence Union is made up of doctors and insures them against negligence claims.

"The lack of a recognised complaints procedure means that patients who are dissatisfied may feel they have no option but to go to a solicitor. Many of these patients may only be seeking an explanation of what went wrong, but once a solicitor has been consulted litigation becomes far more likely," it said recently.

And what of his findings on "atrocious" medical notes? These are of crucial importance after the event, when a complaint is being pursued.

Yet Mr Murphy found that notes are sometimes written up only when the hospital learns that he is investigating a complaint.

If they do get written up, what then? They go into a file, of course. And what happens to the file? Well, Mr Murphy says the files often are not transferred from one doctor to another "or that they just get lost."

So what can be done about this state of affairs? After dealing with a complaint at Tralee General Hospital, Mr Murphy recommended the following steps to the Southern Health Board for all its hospitals:

Ensure that nurses make a note of any contacts they have with doctors concerning a patient and what they said to the doctor. Mr Murphy wants this to become an "absolute requirement" in all hospitals.

Ensure that doctors' notes are written up "at the earliest possible time" following a medical examination, especially if the examination was requested by a nurse.

Train doctors, nurses and administrative staff in how to deal with complaints from the public.

If a serious complaint is confirmed, a member of senior management should visit the family to apologise for what happened and to explain what it will do next. A "disembodied" written apology is preferred by hospitals but can make things worse, he said.

Mr Murphy should be listened to: judging by his evidence and by the silence which has greeted it, he may be the only champion we've got.

pomorain@irish-times.ie