Complaints, Aggression and Difficult Conversations in General Practice
Practise the moments when a conversation can go several ways: the fee dispute, the forty-minute wait, the abusive call, the relative who wants the record, the online review, the letter from the complaints body. Keep people safe, keep privacy intact and carry the concern through to a fair answer.
Already completed this training? Quick refresher
A quick reminder for experienced staff. Revisit only what you need.
- Threats and urgent clinical needs take priority over the fee discussion.
- Acknowledge the problem, check facts and authority, and agree a realistic update.
- Record observable facts, protect privacy, support staff and fix the failed response system.
Open the lessons and tools. Use current local procedures and sources.
This optional refresher does not record a new completion. Certificates require the full course and its assessments.
For you if…
Reception staff and practice managers. Lessons 1, 2, 3 and 5 are written for reception; lessons 4, 6 and 7 for practice managers and owners; lesson 8 is the final case for everyone. Whichever role you are in, the certificate needs all eight lessons and both quizzes.
What you’ll practise
- Splitting one heated moment into safety, clinical and complaint, and knowing who takes each.
- Opening well with an angry person; ending an abusive call; a line for a patient who is filming.
- Taking a fee dispute without deciding it, and knowing when a gap could not lawfully be charged.
- Hearing a relative’s complaint without releasing a record; replying to a public review without adding facts.
- A duress drill that tests the response, not just the button.
How it works
Eight short, case-based lessons, practical tools and two automatically scored quizzes. Allow about 45 minutes, including the assessments.
Pass the knowledge quiz with at least 80% and the safety quiz with 100%; retry as needed. The final case is a practice exercise with a checklist.
The people and practice in this course are made up. Your own practice’s procedures apply. This course is professional development, not accredited CPD.
Explore the lessons
- Choose the right response first
- Practise the opening — the long wait
- Practise the response — the disputed fee
- Make the workplace safer before the next incident
- Practise the response — representative and online complaint
- Ending the doctor–patient relationship
- Support staff and close the improvement loop
- Final practice activity — fee dispute, threat and missing facts
Sources (checked September 2026)
- Safe Work Australia: Violence, aggression and harassment
- Safe Work Australia: Preventing workplace violence guide
- Safe Work Australia: model code, psychosocial hazards
- WorkSafe Queensland: psychosocial hazards Code of Practice 2022
- Ahpra: health complaints organisations
- OAIC Guide to health privacy
- RACGP Standards 5th edition, C3.2
- Bulk Billing Practice Incentive Program guidelines
- Services Australia: assignment of benefit