Bid To Cut NHS Blunders That Hit One In Every 10 Patients

THE NHS in Scotland must learn from the oil and nuclear industries to cut the tens of thousands of mistakes made each year when caring for patients, experts said yesterday.

It is estimated that 85,000 errors are made involving patients in Scotland each year, costing the NHS £200 million in extra time in hospital and compensation. But experts believe this number could be cut in half with better monitoring and prevention systems put in place.

A new group – the Scottish Patient Safety Research Network – is now looking to high-risk industries such as oil and gas production, nuclear power and aviation to see how their safety management could be applied to the NHS.

Studies suggest about one in ten hospital admissions involves some kind of mistake being made. These blunders can range from a minor error with medication to hospital-acquired infections. In the worst cases, mistakes can lead to the wrong organ being operated on and even death.

The Scottish Funding Council has awarded £1.5 million to the new network to help co-ordinate the work being done to try to improve patient safety in Scotland.

The universities of Aberdeen, Dundee and St Andrews are also investing £1 million into the project, which will start by trying to gauge the exact extent of medical errors in Scotland.

Professor Rhona Flin, head of the network, said “adverse events” were costing the NHS millions of pounds and seriously affecting many thousands of patients. But she said part of the solution to the problem may lie in an unlikely source.

“We have got a lot of high-risk industries in Scotland, including nuclear, aviation and oil. We need to learn from their strategies to reduce mistakes to apply the same principles in the NHS.”