Student died with sepsis ‘despite doctor mum’s pleas for him to get antibiotics’

A fit and healthy student died within 24 hours of being admitted to hospital after medics failed to act on his doctor mum’s pleas for life-saving antibiotics to treat suspected sepsis, an inquest heard.

William Hewes’s family say staff at Homerton University Hospital failed to ensure the medicine was administered within an hour of his arrival in January 2023, as per national guidelines.

The sporty 6ft 6in history and politics student was admitted after his meningitis, caused by a meningococcal infection, developed into sepsis.

His mother, Deborah Burns, is a consultant paediatrician at the east London hospital and has been a doctor there for more than 20 years.

An inquest into his death at Bow Coroners’ Court heard Mr Hewes arrived at the hospital at 12.06am, was admitted to the hospital’s resuscitation area – ‘resus’ – and received antibiotics at about 1.25am.

Rebecca McMillan, who was the emergency medicine registrar that night, became emotional as she told the coroner what she would have done differently.

She described how from the moment she saw Mr Hewes she believed he might die.

Giving her account of the evening, Dr McMillan said she became ‘immediately very concerned’ about sepsis when she examined Mr Hewes.

She said she told nurses working in resus the type and dose of antibiotics he needed but said: ‘I don’t know that I was clear who I was directing my instruction to.’

She left resus at 12.42am and told the court she would have expected the antibiotics to be administered within 10 minutes of her departure.

But at about 1.17am she realised Mr Hewes had not received the medicine.

‘I do recall standing outside the resus room with (nurse Marianela Balatico) where she asked if I was okay and said that I looked really upset when I realised that antibiotics had not been given,’ she said.

‘We had a conversation along the lines of we didn’t understand how this had happened. We were both upset when we realised that this hadn’t happened.’

Coroner Mary Hassell earlier relayed some of Ms Balatico’s previous evidence to the court in which she explained she had not been told which antibiotics to give and concentrated on relieving Mr Hewes’ symptoms.

‘The antibiotics slipped my mind,’ the nurse said.

Luke Lake, the medical registrar on call that evening, told the court he went to investigate whether antibiotics had been administered after he saw they were not on the digital drugs chart.

It was his query that alerted Dr McMillan to the fact that Mr Hewes had not been given antibiotics, the court heard.

The court was told Dr Burns recorded in her statement that she flagged her son had not been given antibiotics to Dr Lake who then went to investigate, but the doctor disputed this saying she may have asked him about the medicine after he had already queried it with other medical staff.

Both Dr McMillan and Dr Lake said upon reflection they felt their communication with Dr Burns was influenced by the fact that she was a senior consultant and that had they treated her as a lay person they would have pulled her aside and been more frank about how unwell Mr Hewes was.

Dr Lake said that also would have allowed him to better hear about her concerns, including about whether antibiotics had been administered.

Luke Brown, senior charge nurse on the night in question, told the court on Thursday that he ‘assumed’ his team had given Mr Hewes antibiotics and that he did not at any point ask them about whether they had administered the medicine.

‘That was an oversight from me,’ he said.

He agreed that in a case of suspected sepsis, antibiotics should be administered as soon as possible and, in any case, within one hour.

The nurse told the court he trusted the team he left in charge, including Ms Balatico who was a band five nurse, to escalate matters if they needed to, but added: ‘It is disappointing that they didn’t speak to me on that night.’

Asked if he heard Dr Burns repeatedly asking nursing staff whether they were giving her son antibiotics and telling them that he needed them urgently, Mr Brown said: ‘No, I didn’t hear that.’

On what he has learned, he said: ‘In hindsight, I would have gone in there within 60 minutes to make sure that antibiotics had been given and just check in with the resuscitation team.’

He agreed that he would now be more vigilant because of what happened to Mr Hewes but also explained that he had 60 to 80 other patients to look after on the night.

The inquest continues on Friday.

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