Patients' complaints regarding healthcare encounters and communication.

The results show that patients' dissatisfaction with encounters and communication concerned all departments in the healthcare organization. Patients were most dissatisfied when they were not met in a professional manner. There were differences between genders, where women reported more complaints regarding their dissatisfaction with encounters and communication compared with men. Many of the answers on the patient-reported complaints lack a personal apology and some of the patients failed to receive an answer to their complaints.