A FAULTY x-ray machine caused a patient to be exposed to 47 times more radiation during a scan.

The incident was among among a host of issues related to estates recorded at Westmorland General Hospital.

Hundreds of clinical service incidents related to estate and infrastructure failings have been recorded at hospitals across Morecambe Bay in the last few years, data shows.

Crumbling buildings, failing equipment and broken lifts feature on a log of incidents released under freedom of information laws by the trust that runs south Cumbria's hospitals.

During the incident X-ray a radiographer manually terminated the exposure to a patient as she felt the exposure time was 'excessive', logs say.

.The machine was said to have been immediately taken out of action, the trust critical incident policy implemented, and the potential fault reported to the manufacturers and to the Radiological Protection Agency.

It was calculated the dose received by the patient was around 47 times the usual dose, but was said to have been less potentially harmful than a CT scan.

In another incident in December 2020, a worker reported falling on ice that had not been salted and being left with a cracked skull and a bleed on the brain.

Other incidents logged include concerns over the temperature of rooms storing drugs being too high.

Leanne Cooper, interim chief operating officer, University of Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The safety of everyone using our services is the most important thing; and we have plans in place to minimise the risk of any incidents like those detailed in the FOI response as much as possible.

“Every month, hundreds of planned preventative maintenance tasks are undertaken to ensure that the Trust’s estates and facilities perform and function safely. We also have fault logging processes in place to ensure that maintenance issues that arise outside of the planned work, can be picked up by our maintenance colleagues.

“As with many trusts across the country, we do have a backlog of maintenance and we acknowledge that we need more resources to do more. This year, we are investing £32.6m of capital expenditure into our property and equipment. This ranges from replacing small items of medical equipment to full refurbishment of some clinical areas including structural property issues.”