The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (“APIL”) recently published an article following an analysis of NHS research reports.
They reported that last year there were 407 “never events” in the NHS England which is an average of 8 every week. These are the most serious patient safety incidents that are never meant to occur. NHS England have stated that even one of these incidents is a red flag warning that an organisation’s systems for implementing safety advice may not be robust yet more than 120 NHS trusts across England reported such an event. www.apil.org.uk
It is shocking to note that the most common incidents were wrong site surgery such as operations on the wrong limb and foreign objects being left in patient’s bodies after a procedure.
The APIL analysis has found that even before the pandemic, the number of patient safety incidents resulting in severe harm or death had increased since 2010 when NHS organisations were first mandated to start recording such incidents.
Between 2020 and 2021, there was a huge increase in these incidents and 12,208 were reported. That is an average of 33 patients dying or being severely harmed in safety incidents every single day. It is as a result of this that APIL is calling for the government to act and appoint a patient safety commissioner with a wide remit of providing strategic coordination and an overarching link between patients, regulators, healthcare providers and policymakers.
It is clear that the measures that are currently in place are not good enough and more needs to be done to prevent these unnecessary incidents from occurring.
We at Fisher Jones Greenwood support APIL’s campaign for increased patient safety. Should you or anyone you know have been involved in such an incident then please do not hesitate to contact Rhian Lowe on 01206 835269 or email [email protected] for free initial advice.