Most medical professionals are highly trained people who try to do their best for their patients. They will make mistakes, though, just as anyone in any profession will. Hospitals should therefore ensure systems are in place to prevent errors affecting patients.
The National Quality Forum lists certain errors that must never be allowed to happen. They call them never events. These are clearly identifiable mistakes, with grave consequences that are usually preventable.
Examples of these serious errors
Never events can be divided into seven categories: Here are those categories and some examples of the things that fall under each of them.
- Surgical or procedural events: Performing an incorrect procedure or performing the correct procedure on the wrong body part.
- Product or device events: Death or serious injury caused by the use of the incorrect medical device or contaminated pharmaceuticals.
- Patient protection events: Patients killing themselves in the hospital toilets or escaping and getting run down.
- Care management events: Patients dying during a low-risk pregnancy, nurses injecting the wrong drugs, or a patient developing serious pressure ulcers after admission.
- Environmental events: A wall collapsing on top of a patient, or a shower giving a patient a severe electric shock.
- Radiologic events: Metal objects on or near the patient causing serious harm during an X-ray.
- Criminal events: Patients being sexually assaulted on a ward, a rival gang member sneaking and silencing a patient for good or someone who is not a qualified doctor or nurse managing to perform actions on a patient as if they were.
If you or a loved one has suffered harm due to a never event, you may want to examine the possibility of bringing a medical malpractice claim.
