When Martha Mills fell off her bike on a family holiday in Wales in 2021, she damaged her pancreas and needed treatment in hospital. It was serious, beyond the expertise of the local hospital, so the 13-year-old was transferred to Kingâs College hospital in London.
The medics at Kingâs, one of the UKâs leading teaching hospitals, were reassuring. Although the injury was serious, it was treatable and Martha could expect to make a full recovery and be back at school within weeks.
But as her mother, Merope Mills, tells Nosheen Iqbal, by the end of the summer Martha was dead, after a series of shocking mistakes having been made in her treatment. Doctors treating Martha told Merope she had âjust a normal infectionâ and did not escalate her care to the intensive care unit despite the increasing and vocal concerns of her parents. She died just after a bank holiday weekend having gone into septic shock. The inquest into her death heard that she probably would have survived had consultants made a decision to move her to intensive care sooner.
Today, after a campaign by Merope and her husband, Paul Laity, the NHS is announcing it will implement âMarthaâs ruleâ at more than 100 hospital sites in England from April. It will give patients and their families access to an urgent review from senior medics in the same hospital if a patientâs condition is deteriorating rapidly and they feel their concerns are not being listened to.
Photograph: Mills/Laity family photograph/PA
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