A widow is considering legal action against an NHS trust after her husband died following an operation.

Joseph Gill, 58, was admitted to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in July for a lung cancer operation. However, he was given the wrong medication six times when staff mixed him up with another patient and he fell ill.

Despite this, he was taken in for the surgery to receive part of his lung on July 7th. Complications arose and he died on July 16th.

Eileen Gill, 55, said she blames NHS Grampian for her husband’s death and claims the nurses had called him George and repeatedly given him medication meant for a heart patient.

She is now demanding answers in order to consider pursuing a clinical negligence compensation claim.

"We’ve got a solicitor but can’t do anything until we know what drug he was given," she commented.

A spokesperson for NHS Grampian denied that the medication mix-up had led to Mr Gill’s death but said that lessons had been learnt since the mistakes.

This comes after research from the Care Quality Commission revealed that one in nine of the 392 NHS trusts in the UK performed badly or failed to improve in the last year.