Medical errors: why the NHS must fix systems, not punish clinicians

iStock.com/Iker Martiarena

By Michael Marshall

With more than 400 "never events" in a single year, safety experts say preventable harm will persist until we stop blaming individuals and meaningfully redesign the processes that give rise to mistakes.

The most effective ways to reduce medical errors are to address the systems that give rise to them

Medical errors remain a major threat to patient safety. Between April 2025 and March 2026, the NHS recorded 403 “never events”: preventable patient safety incidents so serious they should never happen. They included having an organ removed when the plan was to conserve it, and surgeons leaving foreign objects like surgical needles in people’s bodies after closing up.

Over the years numerous initiatives have been introduced to reduce medical errors. Perhaps most notably, beginning around the turn of the century, checklists came into common use for everything from the insertion of central lines to surgical safety – with a significant impact on patient outcomes.