Mother left with SEVEN-INCH forceps inside her body for three months in shocking toll of 750 NHS blunders

A former nurse left with forceps inside her for three months after a routine operation was one of hundreds of patients who suffered because of preventable mistakes made by the NHS in recent years.
Mother of four Donna Bowett, 42, went to Alexandra Hospital in Worcestershire in February 2009 to undergo keyhole surgery to remove her gallbladder, but suffered 'excruciating' pain afterwards, not knowing doctors left a seven inch instrument behind.
Hundreds of patients have serious long-term problems and some died after surgeons operated on the wrong organ or left surgical devices inside them.

Shocking:  Donna Bowett and an X-Ray showing the seven inch forceps that were left inside her for three months following an operation to remove her gallbladder

During the past four years there have been 762 so-called ‘never events’ at NHS hospitals – blunders deemed so serious they should never happen.
They include 322 cases of medical instruments being left in the body and 214 operations on the wrong limb or organ. In another 73 incidents, feeding tubes or medication lines were fed into the lungs instead of the stomach and in 58 cases patients were fitted with the wrong implant or prosthetic limb.

400m aid for swamped AE.jpg

However, medical negligence experts say these figures are an underestimate because thousands of other incidents are never reported.
Some patients say the mistakes have left them partially disabled or in severe pain.
One woman died after medical staff put a feeding tube in her lungs during treatment for a stroke.
Her daughter, who wished to remain anonymous, said: ‘You feel guilty because she kept saying she wanted to come out, and we kept saying, “You can’t until you get better”.
‘You feel angry, because you think someone’s killed your mum.’
Mother-of-four Donna Bowett told how surgeons left the forceps inside her. Mrs Bowett, a nurse, was discharged from the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, Worcestershire, in 2009.
A subsequent X-ray showed the device inside her.
The 42-year-old said that four years later, she was still unable to go for long walks with her dog or play badminton or tennis as it was so painful.
She added: ‘The pain was just horrendous and I didn’t know why. I see the X-ray and I think “oh my god”.
‘Being in the medical profession I just couldn’t understand how a mistake like that could happen.’
The figures were uncovered by BBC Radio 4’s World At One in a freedom of information request.
But Ian Cohen, from Goodmans Law legal practice in Liverpool, said there were bound to be more cases because the NHS only logs 25 types of errors. Hundreds of thousands of other blunders which fall outside these categories happen each year but are never reported.
He also argued that hospitals have no incentive to report never events because they may have to reimburse the cost of the procedure to the NHS as well as paying for the patients’ long-term care.
He added: ‘The figures really are the tip of the iceberg.’

Dr Mike Durkin, director of patient safety for NHS England – the new body running the Health Service – said never events should not be allowed to happen at all, adding: ‘One is too many in any week, in any day, in any hospital.’

Doctors could not explain Ms Bowett's discomfort after her botched operation and sent her for an MRI scan

Case: Ms Bowett was at the Alexandra Hospital in Worcestershire (pictured), who have since paid her a huge compensation settlement

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