Serious patient safety incidents occurred seven times at Huddersfield and Calderdale hospitals in recent months.

The so-called Red Incidents are reported when patients were harmed or could have been harmed while in hospital.

The incidents can be either accidents or errors by doctors, nurses and non-clinical staff.

They are reported at Calderdale and Huddersfield Foundation Trust’s (CHFT) monthly public board meetings.

But specific details of which hospital or ward suffered the incidents and what happened are not revealed for fear of identifying the victims.

The trust’s Red Incidents Register notes that one incident was “extremely distressing for the family and staff involved”.

Another reveals the midwife involved in an incident had been referred to the National Midwifery Council.

A third incident reveals it was caused by a “computer glitch”.

All incidents are investigated by a senior clinician and hospital management.

CHFT’s Medical Director, Barbara Crosse, said: “It is important that we record and investigate all incidents to identify any areas of learning and improvement.

“We have processes in place to ensure that we do this.“

The news comes as NHS England admits a 9% increase in the number of patient safety incidents between April and September 2013.

But NHS England chiefs claimed the increase was due to an improvement in recognising and reporting patient safety incidents.

They say the increase in reporting helps protect patients from avoidable harm or death by increasing opportunities to learn from past mistakes.

Dr Mike Durkin, NHS England Director of Patient Safety, said: “It is hugely encouraging to see more and more incidents being reported as this demonstrates that not only doctors, nurses, midwives but all NHS staff feel increasingly comfortable with speaking openly about mistakes and learning from error.

“Incident reporting is our best indicator of whether an organisation’s culture is becoming more open and transparent.

“The incidents reported to the NRLS are key to patient safety as they enable us to identify problems nationally and take action to alert the NHS to emerging risks.

“This summer we will be setting up local patient safety collaboratives, learning labs that will help patients and all staff who work in healthcare to share their learning and problem solve together across a wider team in each area.

“As Professor Don Berwick made clear in his report last year, we need to support the NHS to become a system devoted to continual learning and improvement.”

In the six months from April 2013 to September 2013, 725,314 incidents in England were reported to the NHS’s National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) – 8.9% more than in the same period in the previous year.

Of those reported, 67.7% were reported as causing no harm, 25.7% were reported as causing low harm, meaning the patient required only increased observation or minor treatment as a result of the incident.

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