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This article was published on June 10th, 2015
A Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has come under the spotlight when bosses had to apologise to two patients after investigations into cataract operations revealed that patients had the wrong lenses put in their eyes. The mistakes were made within a fortnight of each other and although the issues were quickly realised and rectified without harm to the patients, it has still raised concerns over the quality of care.
Incidents such as these are known as ‘Never Events’ which are serious mistakes that are wholly preventable and can have the potential to cause serious harm or death.
The Trusts medical director, Dr David Throssell said: “We treat more than two million patients every year and our priority is always to provide safe, high-quality care.
“We perform more than 150,000 operations each year and reported three Never Events during 2014-15.
“Regardless of the number, we take every incident seriously and always undertake a full investigation into their causes.
“We are continually examining our processes and checks to try to limit the chances of never events.
“The two incidents involved the wrong strength of lens being used in a cataract operation. However, this was realised during the surgery, rectified and the patients did not come to any harm.
“We apologised to the patients, undertook a full review of the incidents and are implementing changes to reduce the risk of such errors happening again.”
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