Patients put in danger after X-ray checks were left to junior doctors

PATIENTS suffered ‘significant harm’ after junior doctors were left to interpret tens of thousands of X-rays including those for suspected cancer, watchdogs found.

The error was uncovered by the Care Quality Commission during an inspection of the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth. A national review has now been launched into all hospital X-ray departments to ensure the same mistakes are not being repeated elsewhere.

Bosses will be ordered to provide figures on the number of patients waiting for results, staffing levels and details on who is interpreting the scans.

Inspectors made a spot check at the Portsmouth hospital after a member of the public raised concerns that scans were being wrongly interpreted. They discovered that almost 30,000 X-rays had been reviewed by junior doctors between April last year and March. There were three serious incidents where patients had suffered life-threatening harm. In two cases, lung cancer had spread because junior doctors had not detected tumours on the initial scan.

X-rays should be reviewed by radiologists, specialists who have undergone three years’ of extra training. But severe staffing problems meant that junior doctors were handed the task. Professor Ted Baker, the CQC’s chief inspector of hospitals, said: ‘ This is clearly unacceptable.’

Mark Cubbon, chief executive of Portsmouth Hospital NHS Trust, said the families of patients affected were given an ‘unreserved apology’. The hospital’s A&E was rated inadequate last year.