Major trust records fifth never event at troubled department

A fifth patient has been given the wrong blood at a major teaching hospital’s haematology department where patient safety concerns were raised by clinicians last year.

The incident, at University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation Trust, is the fifth never event involving patients being transfused with the wrong blood at the trust since April 2020.

Only 15 such never events have been recorded in England in the last two financial years, which means UHB accounted for a third of the total in 2020-21 and 2021-22.

HSJ revealed last year that several clinicians had raised safety concerns at the trust’s haematology specialty after most of its services at Heartlands Hospital were moved to Queen Elizabeth Hospital as part of the trust’s pandemic response.

The latest never event, which occurred in March, saw a patient being given an “unintentional transfusion of ABO-incompatible blood components” – according to papers provided to the trust’s council of governors.

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Source: HSJ, 14 June 2022