HOSPITAL chiefs are investigating after medics failed to remove a ‘guide wire’ following a procedure at an Essex hospital reports the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The incident – at the Princess Alexandra Hospital – has been reported as a ‘never event’,  which is an incident deemed to be a serious preventable incident that should never happen.

It was highlighted to a joint meeting of the East and North Herts, Herts Valleys and West Essex Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) on Thursday (November 25).

“The Princess Alexandra Hospital declared a never event in October 2021 – a guide wire was left in situ and detected within three hours – the patient did not come to any harm,” says the report to the CCGs.

Immediate actions have been taken and serious incident investigation is underway.”

Following the meeting, Dr Fay Gilder, medical director at The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust stressed that hospital teams would learn from the incident.

“Every year, we see and care for over 520,000 patients,” said Dr Gilder.

“Our hard working teams continually strive to provide high quality and safe care for our patients.

“We are always open and honest, and in the rare event of an incident occurring we fully investigate.

“We ensure that we learn and implement measures to prevent it from happening in the future.”

Meanwhile at the meeting, a report from the West Essex CCG also pointed to an increase in the number of ‘queries’ raised with their ‘patient experience’ team.

In the six-month period between April and September, the CCG received 579 queries – 170 more than in the same period last year.

he report adds that people are increasingly raising issues with the CCG through their MP.

“Queries are becoming more complex and can involve intractable issues that have taken some time to build up, resulting in great frustration for the patient and the provider – in many cases primary care,” it says.

“The time spent talking with patients on the phone has increased and the type of issues being raised by people via their MP appears to be settling at a lower threshold than in previous years.”