Report: Patient injected on wrong side

Whangarei hospital. Photo / John Stone

A man was injected on the wrong side of his spine at Whangarei Hospital after attending staff numbers were reduced due to an emergency surgery.

The mistake is within one of two patient stories presented in the Quality and Safety Governance Summary Report to the Northland District Health Board in minutes released earlier this month.

Reported alongside the incident was a patient praising the "safe" and "professional" service they encountered after being admitted for a hernia operation.

Chief medical officer for the Northland DHB, Dr Michael Roberts, said the reporting of both positive and negative patient stories to the board was an example of increased transparency.

When Mr Roberts started his career, 28 years ago, there was a tendency to not publicly acknowledge mistakes such as this incident, he said.

"Things go wrong but what matters is that you don't cover it up and you do tell the patient," Dr Roberts said.

The incident was reported in the minutes of the August 25 meeting, which were publicly released at the following meeting on October 6.

A patient was to receive a steroid injection to the side of their spine earlier this year when the orthopaedic surgeon accidently injected the wrong side. They had to repeat the uncomfortable procedure, to address a pinched nerve root for back pain, on the correct side.

The surgeon immediately told the patient, who was very understanding of the mistake and who had experienced some milder symptoms on that side anyway.

The procedure was performed with less staff than usual as the theatre was being prepared for an emergency case, Dr Roberts said.

The checklist was incorrectly completed and there was no arrow marked for which side was to be injected. While Dr Roberts did not make excuses for the mistake, he said: "If someone was going to have a more serious procedure then it would always be checked".