East Surrey Hospital to roll out ‘Martha’s Rule’ in major new patient safety initiative

East Surrey Hospital, part of Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, is one of 143 hospitals nationally that will test and roll out Martha’s Rule in its first year.

The new rule will provide a consistent and understandable way for patients and families to seek an urgent review if their or their loved one’s clinical condition deteriorates, and they would like to request a second opinion.

East Surrey Hospital already has a 24/7 Critical Care Outreach Team which allows staff to escalate concerns about a patient’s condition. Martha’s rule will now open up the access to this specialist team to patients and families for the first time – enabling them to escalate care concerns if necessary.

The service will initially be available to all adults who are admitted onto in-patient wards, before being rolled out to all patients at the Trust’s East Surrey site later this year.

As part of the initiative clinicians will also formally record daily insights and information about a patient’s health directly from them, or their families, ensuring any concerning changes in behaviour or condition noticed by the people who know the patient best are considered by staff caring for them.

Ed Cetti, Chief Medical Officer said: “We are delighted to be one of the first hospitals to roll out Martha’s rule this year. It can only be a positive step for patient safety if patients or their families can request an urgent review if there is a concern about clinical deterioration. This represents a fitting legacy to Martha Mills and the campaign by her parents.”

Claire Rowley, Nurse Consultant for the Critical Care Outreach Team said: “The implementation of Martha’s Rule at East Surrey Hospital will be known as Call 4 Concern (C4C). It will initially be trialled on all adult in-patient wards - enabling patients, or their next of kin, to call for urgent help and advice if they have serious concerns that a patient’s health condition is worsening, and they need a second opinion. Our Critical Care Outreach will act as the ‘fresh set of eyes’, working with ward teams to escalate appropriately and support patients and their family.”

The first phase of the programme will see the rule rolled out it 143 hospitals across the country by March 2025.

What is Martha’s Rule?

The scheme is named after Martha Mills, who died from sepsis aged 13 in 2021, having been treated at King’s College Hospital, London, due to a failure to escalate her to intensive care and after her family’s concerns about her deteriorating condition were not responded to.

Extensive campaigning by Martha’s parents, Merope and Paul, supported by the cross-party think tank Demos, saw widespread support for a single system that allows patients or their families to trigger an urgent clinical review from a different team in the hospital if the patient’s condition is rapidly worsening and they feel they are not getting the care they need.