Posted on 26th Sep
King’s Mill Hospital in Sutton is among the first in the UK to introduce Martha’s Rule, which provides patients and their families with easy access to an urgent review if their condition worsens.
The hospital is one of 143 hospital sites chosen to pilot the first phase of the major patient safety initiative – six months ahead of the deadline of March 2025.
Martha’s Rule provides a clear and consistent way for patients, their families and carers to seek an urgent review if they feel a patient’s condition is deteriorating and not being responded to quickly enough by staff.
It will apply to all in-patients, across all areas of the hospital including Maternity, Paediatrics and the Emergency Department (from the point when a decision is taken to admit the patient).
The acute hospital already has an established 24/7 Critical Care Outreach Team, which enables staff to escalate concerns about a patient’s condition. This will now be extended and, for the first time, these specialist teams will be directly available to patients and their families – so they too can escalate care concerns if they feel there has been a noticeable change or deterioration in the patient’s condition.
Patients, their families and carers should first raise their concerns with the teams who are caring for the patient, but if they remain concerned then they are now able to call a dedicated phone number, 07385 115574, to activate Martha’s Rule and speak to the Critical Care Outreach Team, who should listen to their concerns and act immediately to review the patient.
Clinicians will also record daily information about a patient’s health directly from them, or their families. This will ensure that the vitally important concerns of those who know the patient best are listened to and acted upon and allow the teams caring for them to be responsive to the patient’s needs sooner.
Phil Bolton, chief nurse of Sherwood Forest Hospitals, which runs King’s Mill, said: “We are delighted to be supporting this vitally important national initiative working together with our patients for better communication and to ensure that the concerns of our patients and their families are really listened to.
“We want to be known as an outstanding local hospital that delivers quality services for our patients, delivering consistently outstanding care by compassionate people.
“This is an important step forward for patient care and safety which will always be our priority.”
Thirteen-year-old Martha Mills died in 2021 after developing sepsis in hospital, following a pancreatic injury after falling off her bike. Martha’s family’s concerns about her deteriorating condition were not responded to promptly and in 2023 the coroner ruled that Martha would probably have survived had she been moved to intensive care earlier.
Since then, her parents Merope and Paul Mills have campaigned extensively for a single system to allow patients and their families to activate an urgent clinical review from a different team in the hospital if they felt the patient’s condition was worsening.
In response to this and other cases related to the management of deterioration, the then Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and NHS England committed to implement ‘Martha’s Rule’ – a patient safety initiative delivered as part of a wider NHS strategy.
