NEARLY two thirds of consultants and more than half the nurses at Oxford’s hospitals said they had seen potentially harmful errors or near misses at work in the past month.

The results of an NHS-wide staff survey put Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust in the bottom fifth of 147 trusts in the country in 11 out of 38 categories, including numbers suffering work-related stress and the availability of hand-washing materials.

Four in 10 nurses and doctors said they did not feel satisfied with the quality of work and patient care they delivered.

And when questioned for the Care Quality Commission survey in October, 42 per cent of staff said they had witnessed at least one incident that could have hurt staff, patients or service users within the previous month.

Among doctors, consultants and surgeons it was 65 per cent, while 57 per cent of nurses said they had seen potentially harmful errors.

That put the hospitals trust, which oversees John Radcliffe, Churchill and Horton hospitals, in the bottom nine in England.

Royal College of Nursing spokes-man Helen Wigginton said the results were “horrific”, and said the pressure on staff would get worse with the trust’s planned £52.75m cuts, announced last week.

She added: “The impact has been that there are not enough nurses on the wards doing the jobs that need to be done. That leads to things that do get missed or left.

“Nurses are stressed, and working over their workload week-in, week-out.”

Anita Higham, of Oxfordshire Link health watchdog, warned medics would face more scrutiny from patients as a result of the Government’s planned NHS reforms.

She said: “I’m not surprised by the results, but more will come out as the public have their say on what has probably happened in hospitals for many a long decade.

“For the first time in the history of public medicine, many people are beginning to notice and challenge when things are not as God-like as everyone thought.”

Trust chief executive Sir Jona-than Michael said there was “no room for complacency” but that a new management structure put in place in October improved staff morale and he was “optimistic” issues raised could be tackled.

He said: “My impression from the first five months is that it has resulted in a significant improvement in the engagement of staff within the organisation.

“Whilst I don’t want to underestimate the challenges, on the whole staff have found it has actually improved care and performance within a resource envelope that we all know is a pressure for us in the NHS and the whole public sector.”

Trust vice chairman Geoff Salt added: “We cannot underestimate that these are poor results.

“It is a real call to arms.”

sloan@oxfordmail.co.uk