Martha Mills doctor's failings 'particularly grave'
The failings of a doctor responsible for Martha Mills' care, who died from sepsis, amounted to "gross negligence" and were "particularly grave", a medical tribunal says.Her death gave rise to Martha's Rule in hundreds of hospitals in England, giving parents the right to an urgent second opinion.The tribunal found consultant Prof Richard Thompson failed to appreciate how seriously ill 13-year-old Martha had become in the summer of 2021, following a bike accident.On the crucial afternoon, he did not examine her in person or send her to intensive care.The tribunal concluded Prof Thompson's fitness to practise is impaired, but whether he will be sanctioned is still to be decided.
Martha was transferred to King's College Hospital in London in 2021, one of three specialist treatment centres in the UK, after a holiday bike accident left her with serious injuries to her pancreas. Her parents, Merope Mills and Paul Laity, wrote about their pain and anger over their daughter's treatment following her death.During a family holiday, Martha had skidded on some sand and fell heavily on to the handlebars."It was a difficult, tricky injury, but it did not have to be a fatal one," Merope has said.But she stayed in the hospital for the next month.She developed an infection and then signs of sepsis - when the body's response to an infection is overwhelming and ends up injuring its own tissues and organs - but this was not managed properly.An inquest found that she could have survived her injuries if she'd been referred to the specialist children's intensive care in the hospital promptly, and received better care.Interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Today programme in 2023, Merope Mills said her family were not listened to by senior doctors on several occasions and were "not given the full picture" about Martha's deteriorating condition.
Over the past few weeks, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service has heard allegations from the doctors' regulator, the General Medical Council (GMC), that Prof Thompson failed on several counts over his care of Martha.He was the consultant on call on her ward on 29 August 2021 - two days before she died.The tribunal said it was "evident" that by around 17:00 that day Martha had "several high risk indicators" including her heart rate, blood pressure, breathing and a rising temperature, which "indicated a sudden and significant deterioration".It said Martha's condition, which included a new rash, justified her being moved to intensive care but "this opportunity was not taken".Later that evening, Prof Thompson was called at home by a colleague about Martha's continued fever. He had already seen her on his morning ward round, but did not return to the hospital to examine her in person.Prof Thompson has said one of the reasons he wanted to keep Martha on his ward was not to distress her parents, but the tribunal said this did not justify withholding or delaying her move to intensive care.The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service has now decided that Prof Richard Thompson's fitness to practise had been impaired.The tribunal said this would reassure the public and send a message to doctors about the importance of following the fundamental principles of good care.
Martha's parents raised concerns about their daughter's care to the regulator, the General Medical Council, in 2022.Responding to the tribunal's findings Martha's parents said: "It is important to us that allegations denied have been found proved and the gravity of mistakes that led to our daughter's preventable death has been recognised. "We will always have in our minds the failures of culture, training and policy on Rays of Sunshine Ward at King's College Hospital, as well as the responsibility of individuals. "We'd like to thank all the thoughtful doctors who have helped us to understand what happened to Martha."The hospital that looked after Martha has admitted mistakes were made, and the trust said previously in a statement that it "remains deeply sorry that we failed Martha when she needed us most".
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Cancer: World-first 'Trojan horse' therapy to be given on NHS
A "Trojan horse" therapy that sneaks toxic drugs inside cancer cells is being made available on the NHS in England in a world can halt the blood cancer myeloma for nearly three times longer than current drug is an advanced form of chemotherapy that hits cancer with a bigger dose, while reducing Silvester, one of the first people to get it, says the therapy has been "life-changing" and he's now planning history-themed adventures. Myeloma – also known as multiple myeloma – affects part of the immune system called plasma cells. These are made in the spongey bone marrow in the centre of our who is 60 and from Sheffield, was diagnosed nearly two years ago after the cancer led to broken bones in his had a bone marrow transplant last year, but relapsed around Christmas. He has since been on the new therapy – called belantamab mafodotin – as part of an early access weeks he was in remission. Other treatments could have left him isolating in his bedroom for months, so Paul says the therapy "is absolutely life-changing" and was "creating that opportunity to enjoy" life. Visiting Hadrian's Wall is next on the agenda for history buff Paul; and he's looking forward to one of his daughters graduating later this year. "Most people say 'you look really really well'... I have a good normal life," he told the BBC. How does this therapy work? Paul's therapy - belantamab mafodotin – is a lethal chemotherapy drug that has been bound to an antibody, similar to the ones the body uses to fight infection. However, these antibodies have been designed to spot markings on the outside of plasma cells. So they travel to cancerous cells, stick to the surface and are then absorbed. Once inside they release their toxic payload, to kill the cancer. The therapy is named Trojan horse therapy after the siege of the city of Troy in Greek mythology, when a giant wooden horse was used to smuggle soldiers into the cannot be cured, but clinical trials last year showed the Trojan horse therapy halted the cancer for three years, compared to 13 months with current therapies. Prof Peter Johnson, the national clinical director for cancer at NHS England, said the difference was "life-changing".He told me: "This is a really important development for people with myeloma, because although we may not be able to cure the illness, giving them time free of the disease and free of the symptoms is really important."We've seen in the last few years that using antibodies to deliver chemotherapy drugs directly into cells can make a big difference for a variety of different types of cancer." Around 33,000 people are living with myeloma in the UK. The new drug will be used when the first-choice therapy fails, so around 1,500 patients a year could decision comes after a review by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) concluded the drug was cost-effective for NHS use. NICE recommendations are normally adopted in England, Wales and Northern Ireland while Scotland has its own process. The therapy is kinder than other cancer treatments, but is not free from side-effects. After a cancer cell has been destroyed, the remaining chemotherapy drug will leak into the body. This can cause dry eyes and blurred vision. 'These are very smart drugs' The technical name for these drugs is an therapy was developed by GSK in the UK with early research taking place in Stevenage and the first clinical trials in Martin Kaiser, team leader in myeloma molecular therapy at the Institute of Cancer Research, said these "are very smart drugs" and the difference in side effects compared to other drugs "is really remarkable".While myeloma is still considered an incurable cancer, Prof Kaiser says drugs like this are "an important step towards a functional cure" and he thinks long-term remission will go "above 50% in the next five years".Antibody drug conjugates are being developed for a range of cancers. The limitation is being able to design an antibody that can target the cancer alone. There is one that can target some types of breast cancer. Research is already taking place on stomach and bowel McKinlay, from the charity Myeloma UK, said the approval would "transform the lives of thousands" and it was "fantastic to see the UK at the forefront of myeloma treatment".Health Minister Karin Smyth, said: "This ground-breaking therapy puts the NHS at the forefront of cancer innovation."
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
To Exist as I am by Grace Spence Green: Don't ignore me - and don't pity me, either
To Exist as I am: A Doctor's Notes on Recovery and Radical Acceptance by Grace Spence Green (Wellcome £16.99, 244pp) On October 17, 2018 Grace Spence Green, 22, a fourth-year medical student, was walking through the atrium of Westfield Shopping Centre in east London towards the tube station when a stranger jumped head first from the top-floor balcony and landed on her neck. The fact that she happened to be walking past at that moment meant Grace broke the man's fall and thus saved his life. But his fall broke her spinal cord. She was paralysed for life, from the chest down. The two would never exchange words. She doesn't even mention the man's name in this powerful and excoriating memoir. On the night of the accident, he happened to be in the bay beside hers in A&E, just for one night. Much later, she discovered he was a migrant who'd been high on weed. He was sentenced to four years in jail for grievous bodily harm, released after serving two, and then deported. She doesn't feel bitterness towards 'The Man', as she calls him, or even any emotional connection. All of her anger, and there's a great deal of it, is directed towards us, the general public, for getting things so wrong in what we say to disabled people, and how we treat them. Prepare to be severely chastened – and re-educated. Grace says she doesn't desire our insatiable curiosity, or our pity, yet she invokes both, strongly, in her visceral account of the aftermath of that fateful day. The week in a high-dependency unit 'in a warm, fuzzy, opioid dream'; the 26 metal staples put down the middle of her back by the surgeon Dr Bull; the eeriness of the 'bloodless injury', which nonetheless wrecked her body; the ominous words spoken by the doctors three months later, at the official prognosis and diagnosis meeting: 'It would be good to see things changing over the next few weeks.' But things did not change. Sensation did not come back to her legs or toes. Up to then, part of her still believed that the operation would 'fix' her, and make everything go back to how it was before. Now, 'my seemingly impenetrable bubble of denial had burst'. It would take eight months for the fact that the injury was permanent, and that she would never walk again, to sink fully into her brain. At the Royal National Orthopaedic Rehabilitation Centre in Stanmore, north-west London, Grace was relieved as well as shocked to meet other young people in a similar plight. There was competitiveness among some of the patients. 'Are you walking yet?' she was asked. 'Not yet,' she'd reply. She recalls the bleakness of returning to the Centre after a few days at home over Christmas with her loving family and her steadfast boyfriend Nathan, to whom she would later become engaged. She thought back to the weekend before the accident: she and her friends had sat up all night round a bonfire in a Kentish field, chatting and laughing. 'Now I find I have lost control of every bodily function, in a place I cannot leave.' She was told she'd need to insert a single-use catheter into herself every four hours for the rest of her life. She felt 'waves of hatred' towards the wheelchair at first – until she learned to appreciate it as a tool, just as spectacles are a tool. She now can't stand the expression 'wheelchair-bound'. She bristles when people use the word 'inspirational' to describe her progress – she calls it 'inspiration porn', as if people get some kick from her 'tragic' story. 'I've heard the word so many times that it's lost all meaning.' But it's hard not to see her as an inspiration. She completed her medical studies, became a junior doctor in 2021 and now makes it her business to protect the dignity and autonomy of her patients, in a way that sometimes did not happen to her. She notices that as soon as she takes off her lanyard and stethoscope at the end of the working day, she becomes 'hyper-visible and utterly ignored'. That's the daily status of too many disabled people. She does not like her wheelchair to be pushed or pulled 'in the name of helping'. It undermines her autonomy. She also hates it when people hold the door open for her: 'It can be much easier for me to do it myself, rather than having to duck under an outstretched arm.' We should say to a disabled person, 'You let me know if you need help.' Questions and remarks that annoyed her while she was in hospital were: 'Is there anything that can be done?'; 'Are you getting better?'; and 'It's not permanent, I hope?' So, don't say those. But also, whatever you do, don't say to a disabled person that you don't see them as disabled. ' 'You're not looking at me properly,' I want to say. 'You are missing a huge part of me by trying to ignore this." ' And on no account must you say you pity her. 'When people do that, it feels as if they have forced their way into my world and spat on it.' Nor must you single a disabled person out for notice, even out of kindness. Once, back at medical school, an instructor was on the phone cross that a lesson was starting late. 'And we have a lady in a WHEELCHAIR waiting in the corridor, so it's just unacceptable.' Grace felt 'shaken, to be singled out in a crowd of peers.' Later, the instructor said, 'Sorry – I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to be offensive, I'm sorry, it was just a stressful situation.' Grace didn't 'interrupt her ramble'. She just looked directly into her eye and said, 'OK'. 'Micro-aggression upon microaggression, piling up,' Grace calls all this. For her, it's an uphill battle to defend her happiness, when the assumption is that she's the 'poor brave tragic girl', whose boyfriend was 'a hero' not to desert her. Every October 17, she celebrates her 'alive day'. The fact that her wheelchair is full of scratches and dents is a sign of a life lived to the full. 'I am going to enjoy a life that society has told me is not worthy. That is activism.'
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Women's Prize for Fiction ‘greatest honour' as an intersex woman, says winner
The winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction has said the award is 'the greatest honour of my life as a woman' as she reflected on her experience growing up intersex. Dutch author Yael van der Wouden won the accolade for her debut novel, The Safekeep, and used her winner's speech to champion the trans community, who have 'changed the system' and 'fought for health care'. The book, which explores repressed desire and the unresolved aftermath of the Holocaust in post-Second World War Netherlands, was described as an 'astonishing debut' by the head of the judges. The ceremony, held in central London on Thursday, saw the non-fiction prize awarded to physician Dr Rachel Clarke for The Story Of A Heart, which explores the human experience behind organ donation. In her winner's speech, after thanking the judges, van der Wouden said: 'I was a girl until I turned 13, and then, as I hit puberty, all that was supposed to happen did not quite happen. 'And if it did happen, it happened too much, and all at once my girlhood became an uncertain fact. 'I won't thrill you too much with the specifics, but the long and the short of it is that, hormonally, I'm intersex. 'This little fact defined my life throughout my teens, until I advocated for the health care that I needed. 'The surgery and the hormones that I needed, which not all intersex people need. Not all intersex people feel at odds with their gender presentation. 'I mention the fact that I did, because in the few precious moments here on stage, I am receiving, truly, the greatest honour of my life as a woman, presenting to you as a woman, and accepting this Women's Prize. 'And that is because of every single trans person who's fought for health care, who changed the system, the law, societal standards, themselves. I stand on their shoulders.' The NHS website says intersex, or differences in sex development (DSD), is a group of rare conditions involving genes, hormones and reproductive organs that mean a person's sex development is different to most. In contrast, people who are transgender identify as a gender separate to the sex they were born in and sometimes go through gender-affirming surgery. Van der Wouden's novel follows Isabel, a young woman whose life in solitude is upended when her brother's girlfriend Eva comes to live in their family house in what turns into a summer of obsession, suspicion and desire. The chairwoman of the judges for the fiction prize, writer Kit de Waal, said: 'This astonishing debut is a classic in the making, a story to be loved and appreciated for generations to come. Books like this don't come along every day.' Van der Wouden will receive £30,000 and a limited-edition bronze statuette known as the Bessie, which was created and donated by artist Grizel Niven. The judging panel for the Women's Prize for Fiction included novelist and journalist Diana Evans, author and journalist Bryony Gordon, writer and magazine editor Deborah Joseph, and musician and composer Amelia Warner. Clarke said she has 'literally been a feminist since I was too young to know what that word even meant', as she collected her award. The physician's book recounts two family stories, documenting how medical staff take care of nine-year-old Kiera in her final hours after a car accident, while offering a new life to nine-year-old Max who is suffering from heart failure from a viral infection. Clarke, who is behind the books Breathtaking and Your Life In My Hands: A Junior Doctor's Story, will receive £30,000 and a limited-edition piece of art known as the Charlotte, both gifted by the Charlotte Aitken Trust. The judging panel for the non-fiction prize included writer and broadcaster Dr Leah Broad, whose work focuses on women's cultural history, and novelist and critic Elizabeth Buchan. Previous winners of the fiction prize include Tayari Jones for An American Marriage and Madeline Miller for The Song Of Achilles, while the first non-fiction prize was awarded last year to Naomi Klein for Doppelganger: A Trip Into The Mirror World. The awards were announced by the Women's Prize Trust, a UK charity that aims to 'create equitable opportunities for women in the world of books and beyond'.
