Nuffield Hospital in Leeds has admitted that an incident of “wrong site surgery” had taken place at the hospital with a patient almost undergoing surgery on the wrong part of the body.
An investigation has been conducted into the near miss which was noticed by medics before the treatment had taken place. It stressed that no harm had been caused to the patient.
Dr Damian Riley, medical director at NHS Leeds, said that though there had been no harm to the patient, both Nuffield Independent Hospital and NHS Leeds recognised that a serious incident almost occurred. He added: “We have been working closely with the hospital to identify what happened in this case. Following a thorough investigation we're now ensuring that changes are put in place to reduce the risk of this kind of 'near miss' happening in the future.”
He stressed that staff were soon alerted to the problem and the procedure was undertaken as had originally been planned.
A spokeswoman for Nuffield Health said: “We take any clinical incident very seriously indeed. Although such cases are very rare, our incident reporting and management process are market leading and our rigorous follow-up investigations ensure that we learn from every incident and improve our processes. Nuffield Health's incident rate is exceptionally low.”