Faulty NHS medical equipment is blamed for more than 300 deaths in two years

Broken or malfunctioning medical equipment has been linked to more than 300 patient deaths over the past two years, damning NHS figures reveal.

Staff have detailed the catastrophic failings on a confidential safety database, released to the Daily Mail under Freedom of Information laws.

In one incident, ambulance crews fighting to restart a patient's heart were unable to deliver a life-saving shock after their defibrillator's battery died – and the spare they reached for was flat too. Other cases involved a defibrillator that stopped working in rain and resuscitation bags missing vital parts.

In another incident a patient was taken to an operating theatre wearing an oxygen mask with the valve shut and suffered a cardiac arrest through lack of oxygen.

At one hospital the emergency bleep system failed for an entire morning, meaning no crash calls reached the critical care team responsible for answering them. Human error caused some of the malfunctions, including an incident when a woman was found dead in an A&E chair after a nurse replaced her oxygen cylinder but forgot to switch it on.

The 312 fatal incidents linked to 'devices' occurred in England in the financial years 2024/25 and 2025/26, when there were 158 and 154 cases, respectively.

Each was recorded on the Learn from Patient Safety Events Service, which the NHS says is intended to 'make patient care safer'. Hospital and ambulance staff are required to log events that have harmed a patient or could have done.

The database does not record whether the equipment directly caused each death.

The NHS said: 'Clinicians review all incidents reported as resulting in severe harm or death.'

Separate statistics from NHS Resolution, the health service's legal arm, show there were five payouts last year where faulty equipment led to a patient's death, with compensation totalling £254,500.

A spokesman for the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said: 'It's vital that staff receive the proper training on the use of medical equipment, and that there is appropriate equipment monitoring and maintenance.'

An NHS England spokesman said: 'All NHS hospitals are required to have plans in place for how they respond to patient safety incidents to ensure improvements are made when rare events like this occur.'