A damning catalogue of errors in the county's biggest hospital trust has been revealed by its own staff.

Hundreds of workers at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust have told bosses they witnessed blunders, near misses or other incidents which could have hurt patients or staff.

The revelations came in a survey of more than 400 workers - including doctors and nurses - which laid bare a culture of widespread bullying.

They also appear to be at odds with the trust's official figures which show just a handful of "serious untoward incidents" - events that could cause serious harm to patients, staff or the public - were reported last year.

The survey revealed: 86 per cent of staff had witnessed at least one incident in the past month which could have led to an injury - compared with just 46 per cent a year earlier three-quarters were working longer than their contracted hours in an average week four in ten had suffered from work-related stress in the previous year a quarter had experienced harassment, bullying or abuse from staff in previous months.

Charles Harrity, of the GMB union, said: "I am not surprised by the results of this survey which indicate just how much pressure and stress staff are working under. These are issues we have raised time and time again but management have still not got to grips with them."

The work-related stress score placed the trust, which runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, in the worst 20 per cent of acute trusts in England.

The survey also showed a chronic lack of confidence in managers to deal with bullying.

Staff who indicated they had experienced harassment, bullying or abuse were asked questions about the extent to which they thought their bosses took effective action.

Possible scores ranged from one to five with one representing the perception the trust never takes any affective action and five saying it always takes action. The trust's score of 3.26 was in the lowest 20 per cent of acute trusts in England.

Separate figures obtained by The Argus under the Freedom of Information Act reveal 15 "serious untoward incidents"

were reported last year.

Five were related to the "management of patients", although the trust could not provide details because of patient confidentiality.

A further five were infection control incidents, mainly relating to the outbreak of diarrhoea and vomiting in wards.

The survey was carried out for the Healthcare Commission last October at a time when staff were being consulted on redundancies as part of the trust's moves to save millions of pounds through its Turnaround financial programme.

Work to get back on financial track included shedding jobs and cutting back on beds which added to workloads and stress.

At a board meeting this week acting director of human resources Simon Maurice said the results of the survey were "very disappointing" and it was important the trust responded by addressing the concerns highlighted.

A detailed action plan has been developed to address each area of concern.

Initiatives under way before the action plan was set up include the development of a zero tolerance approach to bullying.

Trust chief executive Peter Coles said: "We expected these results to be poor because of the time but that is not an excuse and the findings are disappointing.

We must do better and learn from it. We have been going through a period of change which has been a painful process."