Draft:Merope Mills

Merope Laura Mills (born 15 July 1977) is a British journalist and patient safety campaigner. She is a multiple award-winning editor of The Guardian Saturday magazine, and set up the newspaper's West Coast office in the USA. Her patient safety safety activism, following the death of her 13-year-old daughter, Martha, has led to the introduction of Martha's Rule, the right to a patient or family-triggered rapid review in response to a deterioration on a hospital ward.

Early life
Mills was born in Chiswick, London, to Michael Mills, a television producer and director, and Valerie Leon, an actress. Her brother, Leon Mills, is two years older.

Education
Mills attended Queen Anne's School and, for the sixth-form, Hurtwood House in Surrey. She studied psychology at Manchester University, where she was awarded a first-class degree and edited the university newspaper.

Career
Mills joined the Guardian in 2000. She has been a reporter, and a features journalist, and was editor of the Film & Music section before taking over the editorship of Weekend magazine, published on Saturdays. She is a three-time Editor of the Year winner at the British Society for Magazine Editors (BSME) awards. After leading the multimedia team in the London office, in 2015 she set up the Guardian West Coast office in the USA. In 2018 she returned to the UK and left the Guardian to become a partner in Tortoise Media. She re-joined Guardian News Media as an executive editor and as editor of the enlarged and multi-sectioned Saturday magazine early in 2021.

Martha's Rule
In August 2021, a few days before her 14th birthday, Mills' daughter, Martha, died in hospital. It was a preventable death from septic shock, following a series of hospital mistakes. Martha had a treatable pancreatic injury following a holiday bike accident. She had a bed for several weeks on Rays of Sunshine Ward, King's College Hospital (KCH), in south London, one of three specialist centres in England for the treatment of pancreatic trauma. Martha was kept on the ward as she deteriorated, though there were five occasions when it would have been appropriate to involve paediatric intensive care (PICU). Had she been moved to PICU, where a bed was available, observation and treatment would have different. In 2022 a coroner ruled that Martha would most likely have survived if medics had identified the warning signs and transferred her to PICU. King's College Hospital has apologised for mistakes and said in a statement that it 'remains deeply sorry that we failed Martha when she needed us most'.

In September 2022, on what would have been Martha's 15th birthday, Mills wrote about Martha and her treatment at King's College Hospital in an article for the Guardian, which was widely read all over the world and has become a text studied in medical schools. Mills wrote that although she had, along with Martha's Dad, Paul Laity, raised concerns about Martha's deterioration, her opinions were ignored or dismissed by the consultants and junior doctors on Rays of Sunshine Ward at KCH. The article recounted that Martha developed severe sepsis six days before she died, but her parents were never told this; other symptoms were kept from them and left untreated. On the day of her severe deterioration, Martha had ongoing sepsis from an unknown source, very low blood pressure, a fever and a rapid heart rate. She then developed a rash, which Mills, by her daughter's bedside, was worried was a sepsis rash: she relayed this concern to the doctor but, though she was correct, the doctor ignored her and pursued a misdiagnosis. There were no consultants to turn to, because it was a weekend. Martha wasn't moved to intensive care, despite meeting all the hospital criteria for escalation: KCH's own Serious Incident Investigation Report – which Mills drew on in writing her piece – noted that there were poor relations between the high-status 'liver team' working on Rays of Sunshine ward and paediatric intensive care: the liver team had a reputation for being dismissive of their colleagues in PICU. Against hospital protocol, Mills has noted, the duty consultant resisted a review of Martha because it would have increased Mills's anxiety. In the Guardian, Mills wrote that the liver team doctors on Rays of Sunshine Ward were overconfident, complacent and failed to listen to her in part because she was a woman. Although nurses had noted Martha to be at risk days before she died, such was the hierarchy on the ward that their opinion went unregarded by the doctors.

Following the significant public response to the Guardian article, Mills and Laity were asked by the think-tank Demos to work jointly on a patient safety initiative. After research and a meeting with NHS representatives and other health stakeholders, the decision was taken to concentrate on Martha's Rule. Mills had been approached by health workers in Australia, who told her about Ryan's Rule, a patient safety process in Queensland, Australia. Martha's Rule also draws on Call 4 Concern, an initiative introduced in a number of British hospitals.

In September 2023, Mills gave an interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, telling the story of Martha's treatment and making the case for Martha's Rule, which Mills argued would not only save lives but bring about a significant shift in the culture within hospitals towards patient power. Mills, who had been at Martha's bedside as she fatally deteriorated, said: 'I had been "managed", I hadn’t been listened to and I felt powerless ... If a patient and family escalation system such as Martha’s rule had existed – and had been clearly advertised around the hospital with posters and stickers – I’m sure I would have used it and it could well have saved Martha’s life.' Mills called for an increase in patient and family agency in a hospital environment – something long supported in principle by the NHS but not sufficiently achieved in practice.

Within a day of Merope of the broadcast, Martha’s Rule was discussed in the House of Commons. Within a fortnight, the Conservative government had backed the initiative and the Labour Party in opposition had also expressed support, the shadow health secretary Wes Streeting having said he was moved to tears by the BBC interview. Within a week or two, the Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Daily Mail ('A second opinion', 7 September 2023) had followed suit with leading articles expressing their backing of the campaign. The British Medical Journal ran several pieces on Martha's Rule and the editor-in-chief wrote in support of the initiative.

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Steve Barclay, asked Henrietta Hughes, the Patient Safety Commissioner to work on an implementation plan for Martha's Rule. After four 'sprint' meetings involving NHS Trusts, the Health Ombudsman, the CQC, the GMC, the Patients' Association and other bodies, Hughes submitted her recommendations on 20 October 2023. Merope Mills has spoken at the Patient Safety Movement summit and NHS England chief nurses's summit. An official announcement regarding the roll-out of Martha's Rule is to be made in February 2024: implementation across NHS England is to begin in April 2024.

Personal Life
Mills is married to Paul Laity, who re-joined the London Review of Books as an editor following years as non-fiction books editor at the Guardian. They live in London with their daughter, Lottie. Martha Mills died on 31 August 2021.