Piece of a broken drill among items left behind in patients post-op at NHS trust

So-called retained foreign objects included a piece of a broken drill, guidewires, surgical swabs and skin clips.

Figures obtained from the body NHS Resolution revealed six patients claimed a total of £148,546 in compensation for the blunders. But when legal costs were added on top the bill for the trust reached £287,109.

NHS Resolution – the former NHS Litigation Authority – is an arms length body of the Department of Health and Social Care which handles and resolves disputes on behalf of the NHS and attempts to impart learning in order to make improvements from them.

It was asked for information about foreign object cases at hospital trusts by specialist solicitors firm Medical Negligence Assist covering the five year period between 2019/20 and 2023/24.

NHS England categorises items being left inside patients after an operation when they should have been removed as a ‘never event’ – serious, largely preventable patient safety incidents.

While many retained object cases may be identified and resolved without the patient suffering any discomfort, such errors have the potential to cause significant and lasting pain.

Never events can also include blunders such as operating on the wrong area of a patient’s body or transfusing incorrect blood products.

In July the Local Democracy Reporting Service revealed how never events had dropped to their lowest level at South Tees since 2018.

Three such incidents still occurred in 2023/24, four fewer than the seven originally recorded in the 12 months previous.

In a previously published quality account report covering the last financial year, the trust said more staff felt secure raising concerns about unsafe clinical practice and a new ‘resolution pathway’ had been developed to support consistent, constructive, and fair evaluation of the actions of employees involved in incidents.

However it conceded there was more work to be done.

South Tees Hospitals operates the James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, the Friarage Hospital, in Northallerton, along with primary care hospitals in Redcar and Brotton.

Elsewhere in the region, North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, which has hospitals in Stockton and Hartlepool, received fewer than five compensation claims over the period the research covered, although no detail was given on the number of incidents involved or the amount of damages paid.

A spokesman for University Hospitals Tees, the grouping that covers both trusts, said: “We are committed to providing the very best care to our patients. In healthcare, there are rare occasions when there are unintended or unexpected outcomes for patients.

“When this happens we work openly and honestly with patients and their relatives so they are fully supported. This enables us to make meaningful improvements to patient safety processes for the future.”

The national picture in terms of the research showed that the level of claims received and settled over the past five years in terms of retained foreign objects had remained relatively stable. The amount when it came to payouts by trusts was on a clear upward curve since 2021/22.

NHS trusts in England paid out £14.8m in damages between 2019/20 and 2023/24, solely due to claims related to retained objects. A total of 741 claims were resolved by NHS Resolution on behalf of trusts, with 556 of those cases leading to the claimant receiving a payment.