Among 403 patient safety incidents in England, 17 cases had a procedure intended for another patient, one patient who had an organ or body part wrongly removed, and two who were left with surgical gloves inside them, according to Sky News. Hundreds of National Health Service (NHS) patients have been harmed due to errors that should never have occurred, including operations on the wrong body part and medical objects being left inside them, new data shows. Annual figures from NHS England show that there were 403 “never events” for the year from April 2025 to March this year, according to an analysis by the Press Association. Never events are patient safety incidents that are so serious that they should never happen and are preventable. There were 166 incidents related to wrong site surgery, including 17 people who had a procedure intended for another patient, and 40 where treatments were to the wrong side or part of the body. In one case, a patient had an organ or body part removed when the plan had been to conserve it. Overall, 121 of the never events related to foreign objects being left in patients after procedures or surgery, including 26 cases of guide wires, two cases of cotton wool balls, one nasal pack, and one of a central catheter line. Two cases involved surgical gloves, 22 were surgical instruments, five were surgical needles, 21 were surgical swabs, and 32 were vaginal swabs. The data also showed there were eight cases where patients received a procedure that was not part of the surgical plan. There were four other cases where the patient had the wrong procedure altogether. Six people suffered incisions to the wrong part of the body, and 30 received injections in the wrong place. In addition, 38 patients had nerve blocks given on the wrong side and 22 had the wrong skin lesion removed or the incorrect biopsy. An NHS spokesperson said: “NHS staff work exceptionally hard to keep patients safe and incidents like these are extremely rare, but when they do occur NHS trusts are required to investigate what has happened and take effective steps to learn from them and make improvements.”
