TWO incidents so serious they are called ‘never events’ occurred in East Lancashire hospitals over a six-month period.

An NHS report released at the end of last year revealed that a total of 277 never event incidents happened in hospitals across the country between April and October – with two taking place within East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust which runs hospitals including Royal Blackburn and Burnley General.

In the six years previous, 16 never events occurred in the area’s hospitals.

Nationwide, failings such as wrong surgeries, administration of the wrong drugs and misplaced tubes were all recorded among the incidents which took place.

However the two events in East Lancashire’s hospitals involved foreign objects being left inside a patient’s body following surgery or a procedure.

Both cases resulted in only minor or no harm to the patient.

Dr Chris Gardner, associate medical director for quality and safety, said: “The trust has numerous robust measures in place to ensure the safety of our patients at all times.

“However, on the extremely rare occasion that a 'never event' does occur, it is fully investigated so we can learn from and take action to avoid the underlying causes happening again.

“An example of this learning resulted in our operating theatre staff introducing a new patient safety initiative known as ‘10,000 Feet’ which has won awards, been implemented by other NHS hospitals and championed by patient safety groups.

“In respect of the two never events referred to in the NHS Improvement report, the most important outcome was that neither patient came to harm, and both were discharged home as planned.

“All clinical care involves some element of risk. However, it is important to put these statistics into context. During the period covered by the report, the Trust completed over 350,000 patient interactions and 11 months had passed since a similar event was reported.”

Figures for the period between 2013 and 2019 show that there were six occasions when doctors operated on the wrong body parts and five where they left swabs or items used during surgery inside patients.

One patient had an overdose of insulin due to an error, another was connected to an air flowmeter rather than oxygen, while another had medicine administered the wrong way. A further person had a feeding tube misplaced.