‘Never events’ is a term that should be common knowledge to all those who work in hospitals. Yet many patients and their families will not have heard of these.
The concept is simple – some errors should never — ever — happen in a hospital (or any other medical setting). The consquences if they occur are too great, and avoiding them is not all that difficult. Sadly the reason the term exists is that these errors do still happen.
What sort of things do they refer to?
The National Quality Forum came up with the term and maintains an accompanying list of errors it considers to be never events.The current list details 29 types of error that can be grouped into seven categories.
These errors are typically rare, but that’s no excuse for hospitals to forget about them. The few times they do occur, the patient is likely to suffer massively. Examples include patients being sexually abused while in the hospital, a surgeon amputating the wrong limb, someone being artificially inseminated with the wrong sperm or egg and a newborn dying or suffering serious injury during a low-risk pregnancy.
Transparency is key to avoiding never events
One of the things hospitals must do is educate staff and implement systems to catch these errors before they occur. Another is making staff feel confident that they can report near misses and incidents without fear or reprisal. If mistakes are swept under the carpet through fear, then opportunities to close safety gaps may be missed and a never event may eventually occur.
If you or a loved one has been affected by a “never” event and medical negligence, it’s important to know that you may be able to pursue compensation, but you may need help to do it.