When a patient is deteriorating but no one is listening, Martha’s rule will guarantee a second opinion. Martha’s mother, Merope Mills , calls for doctors and nurses to embrace its implementation
My daughter, Martha Mills, died a few days before her 14th birthday in the summer of 2021. It was a preventable death. She was a happy, healthy child being treated for pancreatic trauma at King’s College Hospital, London, after she fell off her bike; no other child on record at the hospital has died of her injury.1 An inquest and two investigations have concluded that, on more than one occasion, she remained on Rays of Sunshine ward—a specialist location for treating the injury—when she should have been escalated to the paediatric intensive care unit, where a bed was available. King’s College Hospital has admitted breach of duty of care. Martha died of septic shock, six days after doctors on the ward recognised that she had severe sepsis.
I have spelt out in detail the mistakes that led to …