Wrong patient undergoes biopsy at City Hospital
Hospital staff carried out a biopsy on the wrong patient’s face, it has emerged.
Staff failed to follow ‘patient identification’ checks to ensure it was the right person having the procedure, chiefs have admitted.
The error, at City Hospital, saw a patient given a biopsy on their cheek and they later had to have the stitches removed.
Three hospital staff from the dermatology department could be censured for the error – classed as a ‘never-event’ involving a male patient who does not speak English as a first language.
The report, from Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust, said: “In this incident neither of the two patients had the same or similar identifiers except their middle name.”
Bosses have begun an internal probe and apologised to the man for the mistake at the City Hospital site.
Councillor Bob Lloyd, who sits on Sandwell Council’s health scrutiny board, said he was concerned to hear of the incident.
He told the Express & Star: “This is worrying – never events are called that because they should never happen.
“The idea is there are a number of procedures for whatever they’re doing that makes it impossible for these things to happen.
“Obviously people do make mistakes, but I’m not sure how they could carry out a procedure on the wrong person or mix people up.
“You can’t defend a never event, you can try and find out why it happened – but realistically you can’t explain it away, because the processes are there to stop it.” Trust board papers state: “The three staff members involved recognise the error made in not correctly identifying the patient prior to them carrying out the intervention.
“The governance department will use the ‘incident decision tree’ to advise the line managers concerned of the appropriate processes to follow and any sanctions or consequences to be applied.
"This process will be initiated by the end of September.”
Dr Roger Stedman, medical director, said: “We are very sorry that this incident happened in our outpatient dermatology clinic a few weeks ago.
“We have talked through our mistake with the patient who was affected here, who is unharmed.
"This error is especially disappointing given similar events on two occasions during the course of the last three years, and it is being treated with the utmost seriousness by the Trust Board.
“We introduced a system whereby those patients who are attending for procedures will be wearing a wristband that contains their details.”
