Serious incidents at Brighton hospital trust – Patient dies after having toe removed

Royal Sussex Hospital

A Brighton hospital trust patient died after having a toe amputated, according to an official report.

The case was one of six serious incidents in a month to be reported by Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust to local health commissioners.

Three of the incidents reported by BSUH were described as “never events” – events that should never happen.

The six incidents were included in a report considered today (Tuesday 24 January) by the Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

It said: “A patient was admitted for urgent removal of an ulcerated non-healing toe lesion. The toe was required to be surgically removed which took place. Three days later the patient suffered a cardiac arrest and died.”

A spokesman for BSUH said: “We are limited in what we can say because of patient confidentiality but there is no evidence to suggest that the cardiac arrest was caused by the amputation of the patient’s toe.”

Another serious incident left hundreds of diabetic patients potentially at risk after they were missed off an eye screening programme.

The report said: “The number of patients on the diabetic eye screening programme register differs from the total number of diabetic patients requiring screening produced by GP practices – a difference of 632 people.

“The discrepancy means that there are patients potentially at risk because they have not had their eyes screened.”

The other serious incidents involved four women patients in separate cases. Three women had swabs or gauze left inside them during surgery – the never events – and an 86-year- old woman suffered a broken thigh bone when she fell while on a ward.

A report to the BSUH board on Thursday (26 January) says that there were a further five serious incidents last month although details are not given.

The Pavilions Drug and Alcohol Service reported two serious incidents involving patients from Brighton and Hove in November.

The CCG report said: “Both were reported as apparent / actual / suspected self-inflicted harm.

“A service user died in Worthing Hospital – circumstances unknown at time of notification (and) an unexpected death of a service user was confirmed by the criminal justice section of Pavilions – again circumstances not known at time of writing.”