Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister from 1957 to 1963, when asked about obstacles to political achievement, said ‘Events, dear boy, events’. Events have been a major change agent for British healthcare over the past couple of decades. A number of scandals have led to a public outcry for greater regulation of healthcare delivery. This section provides brief details of some of the more high profile disasters.

Wayne Jowett

Wayne Jowett was 18 and in remission with leukaemia when he died at the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham in 2001 after intravenous vincristine was wrongly administered via the intrathecal route. The responsible doctor, Dr Mulhem, who was only 3 days into his first post as a specialist registrar in haematology, had instructed a junior doctor to inject an anticancer drug into the patient's spine. Within a few minutes the doctor realized the magnitude of his mistake. After pleading guilty to the manslaughter of his patient by gross negligence, Feda Mulhem was given a custodial sentence of 8 months.