Royal Devon and Exeter hospital defend executive accused of "irresponsible" tweets

The Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital has defended their chief executive after she was criticised for tweeting sensitive information about medical errors. Angela Pedder, who has 149 followers on twitter, posted about a letter from the hospital that had mistakenly been sent to a dead patient, asking him why he did not attend a hospital appointment. On 7 May Ms Pedder tweeted: "@RDEhospital letter today we added to bereved (sic) daughter's pain sent a DNA letter when she had told us of his death. We got it wrong so sorry."

@RDEhospital letter today we added to bereved daughter's pain sent a DNA letter when she had told us of his death. We got it wrong so sorry

— Angela Pedder (@AngelaPedderNHS) May 7, 2014

She also tweeted about a medication mistake made with another patient. James Brent, chairman of the hospital trust, defended Pedder, adding "The NHS is increasingly and appropriately becoming more open, transparent and candid. "Like many other chief executives, the trust's chief executive uses Twitter in this spirit to celebrate our successes, share ideas, drive good practice and point out lessons learned when we don't get things right." The Patients Association said the post was an "irresponsible use of social media". Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: "Spending time in hospital can be distressing at the best of times and the last thing a patient wants is to have this stress added to by irresponsible and potentially unethical tweeting. "In addition, we feel that one of the most senior people in a hospital trust should lead by example and this type of behaviour inevitably carries the risk of encouraging other staff to follow suit." The hospital told the BBC that the tweets did not breach its confidentiality policy.