Three holes were drilled into the wrong side of a patient’s head, while another had her fallopian tube taken out instead of her appendix and a third was subjected to a surgeon cutting into the wrong testicle.
These are just some of 345 mishaps reported to the NHS so far in 2016, mistakes that are costing the organisation £10million in compensation every year.
The NHS describes such incidents as ‘never events’, which according to its website are ‘serious incidents that are wholly preventable’ and have ‘the potential to cause serious patient harm or death.’