Nurses must be allowed to address senior doctors by their first names in order to prevent fatal medical errors, Jeremy Hunt has said.

The Health Secretary said medicine’s strict hierarchy was stopping junior staff speaking up when they notice disasters unfolding and that doing away with formality in operating theatres and other settings was crucial to saving more lives.

He told an international conference on patient safety that health was one of the last professions yet to fully adopt the use of first names.

In many hospitals, staff adhere to convention by using the formal titles "doctor" and, in the case of surgeons, "mister".

Mr Hunt also accused some doctors of squandering the chance to improve because they are often “terrified” of admitting mistakes for fear of being struck off.

It is estimated that up to 9,000 hospital death a year are caused by NHS failings.

Mr Hunt gave the example of Elaine Bromiley, the wife of a British Airways pilot who died when a nurse realised she needed a life-saving tracheostomy but stayed silent due to fear of the surgeons.

“In the operating theatre, if you’ve got a hierarchy, it means you’ve only got one pair of eyes spotting the mistake, whereas if you remove the hierarchy you can have eight or nine pairs of eyes spotting those potentially lethal mistakes,” he said.