Based on work in US hospitals, it draws on the ideas of doctors and nurses working in different departments to try to eradicate "avoidable" mistakes.

NHS Lothian believes it can wipe out up to a third of such mistakes by 2011, cutting the number of deaths in hospitals by 15 per cent.

One of the key initiatives to be introduced under the Patient Safety Alliance is known as the surgical briefing, or surgical pause. Before an operation is carried out surgeons now call their team together to make sure everything is in place.

Dr Charles Swainson, medical director at NHS Lothian, said: "Surgeons have been surprised by the number of things which have been missed. They have taken it extremely seriously.

"In one instance (only] two out of the four nurses had previously undertaken the kind of operation they were about to do. It was wisely postponed until nurses familiar with the procedure could be obtained."

The Patient Safety Alliance programme's roots lie in the US, where researchers based in Boston have been looking at best practice in hospitals since 2004.

They introduced simple rules, such as using different-sized needles to ensure the wrong drugs cannot be injected by mistake. The practices have been adopted by 3100 hospitals across the US and has been credited with saving 122,000 lives in just 18 months.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement, which founded the alliance, has set the target of saving five million lives worldwide.

Dr Swainson said NHS Lothian was setting itself tough targets to meet. "These targets are ambitious but not unrealistic. They have been achieved in the US and some institutions in the UK," he said

In Scotland, the initiative has been pioneered in Tayside, where it has been hailed a success. A spokeswoman for NHS Tayside said: "The work we undertook over the two-year pilot has proved extremely important for us as we undertook system-wide changes to improve patient safety."

Margaret Watt, chairwoman of the Scotland Patients Association, said: "We welcome this if it is going to saves lives in our hospitals. It will need to be monitored carefully though."