An NHS Trust has been investigated by Healthwatch after a number of medical errors occurred including ‘never events’ such as surgical equipment being left inside a patient after an operation.
‘Never events’ are medical errors which are entirely preventable and should never happen, and three serious medical errors were recorded by one NHS Trust which included cutting the wrong toe tendon during foot surgery and medical equipment being left inside patients.
Healthwatch’s chief executive commented:
“As ‘never events’ are serious medical errors, Healthwatch Suffolk would consider them to occur very rarely, if at all,”
“They are defined as very serious, preventable and costly medical errors and as such we expect our local hospitals to pay a great deal of attention to them when they do occur. They must learn from them and act; informing all those who need to make changes in, for example, decision making so that the public can be assured that such occurrences will not be repeated.”
A Hospital spokesperson commented:
“No patients had long lasting or permanent damage because of them.
“We report all incidents using a national serious incident report investigation (SIRI) framework and we publicly report any incidents on our quality audit.”
“It is right for each problem to be highlighted and for a solution to be found,”
“The trust is working hard to ensure that it embeds learning from never events, serious incidents and complaints throughout the organisation for the benefit of patients in the future.”
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If you or a loved one has been unfortunate enough to have experienced poor medical care from medical staff then contact us now at Thorneycroft Solicitors today for a free no-obligation assessment of your case on 0800 1979 345 or complete our online enquiry form.
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