Medical Negligence on the Rise
Recent figures indicate that a number of medical professionals have given wrong doses of strong painkillers to more than one thousand patients, in the space of less than a year. The negligent use of these drugs has resulted in three fatalities and several patients being left with what has been described as ‘severe harm’.
Almost one in five of the dose errors has included morphine, diamorphine and similar opiate drugs and has resulted in some harm for NHS patients.
The findings were released by a Freedom of Information request made by a national newspaper and it revealed the level of mistakes made in England and Wales continued at a high level. This was despite the publicity that followed the paper's revelation in May last year about the death of a 70-year-old died at his home in Cambridgeshire.
He had been injected with a tenfold overdose of diamorphine by a locum GP who had flown in from Germany on the day of the incident.
More GP’s involved in overdoses
The official report into the incident also revealed that two other GPs, who were hired, by Take Care Now - a now-defunct company which provided out of hours services for the NHS - had been involved in non-fatal diamorphine overdoses last year.
The figures show that cases of medical negligence could still be at a high level and lead to a number of accident claims being made for the personal injuries that could result from the medicine overdoses.
The figures also indicate that there has been little change in the number of cases, involving the drug overdoses.
The son of the 70-year-old, who was given the fatal overdose, described the findings as unbelievable".
He went on to say: "Taken at face value [they] suggest nothing has been made safer with regards to opiate medicines at all. Whilst there is no accountability then it seems there will continue to be no effective measures put in place to stop these unnecessary and avoidable deaths."
The Care Quality Commission’s (CQC), director, said: "Unfortunately we will never be able to eliminate human error from healthcare, but the risks can be minimised.
Man could have been alive
She also added: “That is why it is so important that NHS trusts and other health providers report incidents, thoroughly investigate them and make changes to stop the same mistakes happening again. They should also implement changes as a result of safety alerts. Had Take Care Now done this, it is possible that the 70-year-old man would still be alive today.
"The increase in reporting is a good thing. We often find it is the NHS trusts reporting a high number of incidents that are doing a better job of investigating them and taking action to prevent them happening again."
The NPSA said its reporting system was one of the most sophisticated in the world: "We gather patient safety incidents, analyse them for trends and use these as a platform on which to produce patient safety alerts and guidance for the NHS.
"It is evident the reporting culture in the NHS has improved with over one million incidents [relating to drugs, medical and surgical procedures] reported each year.
“The majority of incidents reported to us in relation to diamorphine and other opiates result in low or no harm to the patient. In addition, most of these do not relate to mis-selection of injectable diamorphine or morphine."
Updated on 9/14/2010