Queen's blunders are 'not alarming'

by ADRIAN JENKINS

PATIENTS ‘should not be worried’ by the number of major cock-ups at Burton’s Queen’s Hospital, its chief executive has insisted.

Paula Clark spoke after it emerged that 26 serious untoward incidents (SUIs) happened at the Belvedere Road trust in the past year.

The SUIs, which cover circumstances in which patients suffer severe harm, were among more than 2,200 at 172 NHS trusts in England.

These cases, in turn, formed more than half of the 4,000 blunders blamed by the Royal College of Nursing and Patients’ Association on lack of resources — a claim hotly contested by Ms Clark.

"I would strongly dispute that at Burton," she said: "Our SUIs have been far more about systems, processes and human error and the fact that, on occasions, things will go wrong.

"When you look at the number of patients who come through our doors each year, about 250,000, this is a small number of cases, which we take very seriously.

"Patients should not be worried and it should be put in perspective."

Although unable to reveal details of Queen’s big blunders because of fears over patient confidentiality, the chief executive said they involved all cases in which patients suffered serious harm or death and would, for example, include all infections of the ‘superbugs’ MRSA and clostridium difficile.

Each incident was reported to South Staffordshire Primary Care Trust and West Midlands Strategic Health Authority, and details were also ‘picked up’ by the National Patient Safety Agency, she said.

Ms Clark said Queen’s board tracked investigations into the incidents, each of which was assigned to an executive director who was often either the medical chief, Dr Jonathan Sheldon, or his nursing counterpart, Jackie Jones.

The importance of the process, she explained, was to learn the lessons of each blunder to prevent the likelihood of a recurrence, thereby improving patient safety.

Ms Clark said that Dr Sheldon, who has been in the post since the start of the year, was spearheading a drive to improve patient safety by leading a new group which was due to start giving regular updates to the board.

She said the trust was also keen to foster a climate in which staff were able to report details of near-misses without feeling they would be blamed.

The chief executive said: "The only way to really improve patient safety is to have a very open culture in which staff can say ‘I think I may have done something wrong’."

Queen’s figures compare well with other West Midlands hospitals such as Stafford’s Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, which was recently the subject of a damning report from standards watchdog the Healthcare Commission. It totalled 101.