Four 'avoidable errors' in surgery over last year

Hospitals in Sheffield operated on the wrong part of a patient's body or on the wrong patient entirely four times over the last year, a report revealed.

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust referred to the errors as "never events" in its 2024/25 quality report, defined by NHS England as "serious incidents that are wholly preventable".

In total, the number of patient safety incidents reported in 2024/25 was 30,453, the report said, with 152 (0.5%) of them resulting in serious injury or death.

The trust, which runs the Northern General, Royal Hallamshire, Weston Park, the Charles Clifford Dental Hospital and Jessop Wing Maternity Hospital, has been approached for comment.

In response to the errors, the report said operating theatres had been altered "to be more conducive to completing vital safety checks".

The process of viewing scan results and other checks had also been standardised, it added.

The report, which did not share further details about the four errors, will be discussed on Thursday by Sheffield City Council's health scrutiny sub-committee, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Introducing the document, trust chief executive Kirsten Major wrote: "2024/25 has been extremely challenging for the NHS as a whole.

"[It] was dominated by complex operational pressures, continued industrial action, high demand for both emergency and planned healthcare and a challenging financial position."

The chief executive added: "I am proud to say that our teams have gone above and beyond to ensure we continued to deliver improvements, all of which have impacted positively on the quality, convenience and timeliness of patient care."

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