January 9, 2014 12.35 pm This story is over 122 months old

Tampon stitched inside woman after birth at Lincoln hospital

Never event: A woman with stitches was left with an object inside her after giving birth at Lincoln County Hospital.
Photo: Joshua Potter for The Lincolnite

A “never event” at Lincoln County Hospital left a woman who gave birth with an item accidentally stitched inside of her.

According to a monthly report by United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust, the incident was the first of its kind in the last 14 months at the hospitals it runs.

A “never event” is the term to describe and incident which should never have happened, should the procedure have been carried out appropriately.

The woman, who visited the hospital to give birth, required stitching after giving birth to her child.

During a procedure known as suturing, a surgical tampon was used by the obstetrics unit.

After being treated and receiving the stitches, it was discovered the tampon had been left within the patient.

The stitches and the item were later removed, and the patient did not come to harm during the ordeal.

Staff are now keen to determine what went wrong during the event, in order to avoid a serious “never event” like this happening in future.

A spokesperson for ULHT said: “This is the first never event United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust has had for 14 months.

“The Trust takes incidents such as this extremely seriously and a full investigation will establish the circumstances around it with measures put in place to ensure this never happens again.

“We acted quickly and the patient did not suffer as a consequence.”

ULHT has been under review after the Keogh report found it to be one of 14 Trust with high mortality rates.

The Trust was placed into special measures, and required to take action on 57 recommendations by inspectors.

ULHT issue monthly reports on developments within the Keogh Review, and for January 2014, the report shows that a number of recommendations are being implemented or completed around the Trust, better response to unwell patients, less patient complaints and less concerns about patient safety.