NHS doctors perform traumatic spinal procedure on wrong newborn after mixing up babies with same first name
Doctors working with the United Kingdom’s National Health Service recently imposed a very invasive spinal procedure on the wrong newborn. After a series of 423 gaffes that took place from April last year to January this year, this particular incident occurred because both children have the same first name.
According to Daily Mail, in June alone, there were 63 confirmed cases, which included a man who went in for a simple bladder check ending up getting circumcised. An unauthorized tonsil removal and laser surgery done on the wrong eye were also mentioned in the list of severe mistakes. In March, 21-year-old Tunbridge Wells native Tim Mason died of meningitis after the hospital he was admitted at misdiagnosed him with stomach flu.
In six separate cases, the wrong eye was injected, while a woman’s ovaries were removed after deciding to preserve them. The unending saga of gaffes also includes the wrongful amputation of a toe and the removal of wrong teeth or tooth of 34 individuals.
In the prosthesis session of the report, it was noted that 22 people were given the wrong hip replacement and a woman received a wrong breast implant.
Last October, it was reported that NHS was unable to help a single mother who was struggling to care for her wheelchair-bound autistic daughter from committing suicide. The 15-year-old who was suffering from cerebral ataxia, a degenerative condition which affects muscle coordination, had no care workers assigned to her, nor was she given any assistance at home to make it accessible for the teenager. Kavanagh, who was on anti-depressants, had called the local hospital before her death on April 21. When she related her suicidal thoughts, she was offered an appointment 12 days later.
Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth claimed that all the errors were due to "Tory squeezes and failures to recruit," while NHS safety chief Dr Aidan Fowler seems to believe that these are opportunities to learn. "It's vital that when they happen, hospitals learn. The NHS is one of the safest health systems in the world," he said.