Official data revealed that 389 of these incidents have occurred in the first six months of this year.
NHS health boards are duty bound to notify regulator Healthcare Improvement Scotland when a significant adverse event review (SAERs) has been commissioned following a major incident.
Category one events – the most serious incidents - must be reported and may have caused death, major injury, disfigurement or severe emotional or psychological trauma.
The Scottish Government revealed the figures following a written parliamentary question from Scottish Conservative MSP Tim Eagle.
The data revealed that since 2021, there have been 3,586 incidents reported to the regulator by local health boards and the Scottish Ambulance Service.
The Scottish Government said the 90-day guideline is in place to learn lessons from the significant incidents.
However, Mr Eagle, who represents the Highlands and Islands region in Holyrood, said the figures show that Health Secretary Neil Gray is “out of his depth” and described the data as “catastrophic”.
He told The Herald: “Since the pandemic, the number of significant adverse events in Scotland’s hospital has soared to alarming levels.
“The lethal combination of the SNP’s dire workforce planning and successive flimsy recovery plans has left our NHS in a constant state of crisis, with overstretched staff unable to deliver the standard of care patients deserve.
“These aren’t just statistics, they are patients who have suffered serious harm or even died because of the Nationalists’ catastrophic mismanagement of our health service.
“We cannot go on with business as usual. Neil Gray is out of his depth. He needs to back our common sense plans to cut bureaucracy, slash the ranks of middle managers and surge resources to the frontline.”
Source: The Herald, 27 August 2025
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