PALS officer: handling patient concerns

A PALS officer is the first contact in an NHS trust for patients, relatives and carers who have a question, a worry or a problem with their care. The job is to listen, find out what has happened and get it sorted quickly, often within a day or two, so that it does not turn into a formal complaint. PALS posts in NHS England are usually band 3 or band 4 of Agenda for Change, £25,760 to £31,157 full-time from 1 April 2026, with complaints officers and team leaders at band 5 and above.

What PALS stands for and what it does

PALS is the Patient Advice and Liaison Service. Every NHS trust in England is expected to have one, and you will usually find it at a desk near the main entrance, on the phone and by email.

Most of the work comes in as calls and emails. A daughter cannot get an update on her father’s discharge. A patient has had three outpatient appointments cancelled. Someone’s property went missing on a ward. A family wants to know who to speak to about their mother’s treatment. The PALS officer logs the concern, contacts the ward or department, gets an answer or a named person to call back, and then confirms the outcome with the person who raised it.

PALS also gives general information: how to get copies of medical records, where to park, how to contact a particular service, or how to make a formal complaint if that is what someone wants. Compliments come through PALS too, and passing those back to staff is one of the better parts of the day.

Informal concerns and formal complaints

You will need to explain to patients where PALS stops and the complaints team takes over.

PALS handles concerns informally, aiming for a quick fix where one is possible, without an investigation report or a formal response letter. If the person wants a full investigation and a written response, or the issue is serious, it becomes a formal complaint.

Formal complaints in England follow the Local Authority Social Services and National Health Service Complaints (England) Regulations 2009. The trust has to acknowledge the complaint, investigate it, and send a response explaining what it found and what it will do. If the complainant is still unhappy at the end, they can take it to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. The nhs.uk page on how to complain to the NHS sets out the steps from the patient’s side.

In many trusts PALS and complaints sit in one patient experience team, and officers may work on both. Complaints work involves more writing: drafting response letters for the chief executive’s signature, collecting statements from staff, arranging meetings between families and clinicians, and tracking deadlines.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own complaints arrangements and their own patient advice services, so job titles and processes differ there.

Pay and bands

Role	Usual band	England pay from 1 April 2026 (full-time)
PALS officer, PALS assistant	3 or 4	£25,760 to £31,157
Complaints officer, senior PALS officer	4 or 5	£28,392 to £39,043
PALS and complaints manager, patient experience lead	6 or 7	£39,959 to £56,515

Bands vary between trusts, so check the job description. The 2026/27 figures include the 3.3 per cent Agenda for Change award. Band 4 is a common level for officers who handle cases on their own.

The hours are usually office hours, Monday to Friday, so unsocial hours payments rarely apply. Full-time NHS staff start with 27 days’ annual leave plus eight public holidays.

Skills the job needs

People come into PALS from customer service, NHS admin, ward clerk posts and frontline care. Adverts commonly ask for:

• experience of dealing with members of the public, including people who are upset or angry
• good written English for emails, case notes and letters
• the confidence to chase senior clinicians and managers for answers
• an understanding of confidentiality and when information can be shared with relatives
• accurate use of a case management system

The confidentiality point catches people out. A relative may ring wanting details of a patient’s care, and you need to check whether the patient has consented, whether the caller has legal authority (such as a lasting power of attorney for health and welfare), or whether the patient lacks capacity. Trusts train PALS staff on this, and the trust’s information governance team can advise.

The emotional side

Many of the people who contact PALS are frightened, grieving or exhausted. Some are angry, and a small number are abusive. You will hear about care that went wrong, and you will sometimes be the person who has to say that a department will not do what the family wants. Good PALS officers stay calm, do not promise what they cannot deliver and keep notes of every conversation.

Contact after a death, particularly where a family has questions about the care, is some of the hardest work in the team. Most trusts give PALS staff access to supervision or wellbeing support; ask about it at interview.

You can also end up caught between the family and the staff involved. Staff who are the subject of a concern can feel defensive, and you need their cooperation to resolve it. The guide on what happens when a complaint is made about you shows how the process looks from the staff side, which helps when you are the one asking for their account.

Applying for PALS jobs

PALS and complaints posts are advertised on NHS Jobs and trust websites, often under patient experience. Expect a values-based interview with scenarios such as an angry caller, a request for information from a relative, or a concern that turns out to be a safeguarding issue. The guide to NHS values-based interviews covers the format. If you are coming from a general admin post, the NHS admin jobs guide shows where PALS fits among other band 3 and 4 roles.