World Patient Safety Day 2025: Safe care for every newborn and every child

Today, 17 September 2025, is the sixth annual World Health Organisation (WHO) World Patient Safety Day (WPSD), a global initiative designed to raise awareness and bring together key stakeholders to improve patient safety and eliminate avoidable harm.

This year the theme is ‘Safe care for every newborn and every child’, highlighting the unique risks faced by this age group, such as rapid development, evolving health needs and different disease patterns. In addition, the fact that children rely on adults to speak up and make decisions for them. With the slogan ‘Patient safety from the start!’, the focus of WPSD includes safe childbirth and postnatal care as well as broader child patient safety up to the age of nine. 

Scrutiny on maternity services

This year’s WPSD campaign comes at a time when maternity and neonatal services across England and Wales are already under considerable scrutiny with the ongoing Independent Review of Maternity Services led by Donna Ockenden, expected to report in June 2026, the national investigation into NHS maternity and neonatal services, announced in June 2025 and the national assessment of all maternity and neonatal services in Wales, chaired by former children’s commissioner Sally Holland which began this summer.

The importance of good communication and listening to patients

A common theme from previous maternity reviews is the need to listen to and act on patients’ concerns and involve them in care decisions. Good communication between clinicians is also vital for safe patient care and staff must be able to escalate concerns if necessary. Indeed, one of the Immediate and Essential Actions arising from the final Ockenden report into maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, published in March 2022, was that:

"All trusts must develop and maintain a conflict of clinical opinion policy to support staff members in being able to escalate their clinical concerns regarding a woman’s care in case of disagreement between healthcare professionals".

Martha’s rule

The importance of having a culture where staff actively listen to patients and, in the case of newborns and children, their families and are also able to escalate their own concerns has been further highlighted in the context of paediatric care, after the tragic death of Martha Mills. 

Martha sadly died at Kings College Hospital in 2021 after developing sepsis, her family’s concerns having not been listened to. At the inquest into her death, the Coroner concluded that Martha would probably have survived if she had been transferred earlier to intensive care and given appropriate treatment. Since Martha’s death, her family have campaigned for Martha’s Rule, a patient safety initiative designed to support the early detection of deterioration of patients by ensuring the concerns of patients, families, carers and staff are listened to and acted upon and providing a way for families to seek an urgent second opinion if they are concerned about the care their loved ones receive. Martha’s Rule also empowers staff to call for a rapid review if they feel their concerns about a patient are not being responded to.

Reflecting on this, and the importance of listening to  families to support safe care for children as part of WPSD, the recently announced expansion of Martha’s Rule to include NHS paediatric acute inpatient services across England, is extremely positive. In addition, as part of Phase 2 of the programme, Martha’s Rule is also to be piloted in a small number of maternity and neonatal units and although the feedback from this testing is yet to be evaluated it is a welcome step forwards to improve patient safety for every newborn and every child from the start.

Challenges for healthcare organisations: How can we help?

This is a time when maternity services are under intense scrutiny with a relentless call for positive changes in practice and improved outcomes for parents and their children. At Browne Jacobson, we have a wealth of specialist maternity and neonatal expertise and we offer support to healthcare organisations as they strive to improve patient care and safety. 

We are committed to supporting NHS Trusts and health care organisations with delivering on their strategy to improve maternity outcomes. Our maternity and neonatal expertise spans multiple disciplines, allowing us to deliver a fully integrated service that meets the evolving needs of healthcare organisations, including:

• Clinical negligence: Our dedicated maternity team are known as experts in their field, working on the biggest maternity investigations and handling high value, complex claims.
• Public law: Healthcare specialists who advise on the full range of public law issues that can arise from maternity incidents. We have extensive experience supporting organisations with high-profile reviews, investigations and public inquiries (both statutory and non-statutory)
• Criminal, compliance and regulatory: Our award-winning regulatory team supports healthcare organisations navigate CQC scrutiny, regulatory or criminal investigations and enforcements actions.
• Inquest and advisory: Our inquest and advisory specialists advise and represent healthcare organisations involved in sensitive and high-profile maternity inquests, providing practical, compassionate support with a strong understanding of reputational risk and evidencing meaningful organisational learning outcomes.
• Employment and workforce: Our specialists advise on complex HR issues arising from maternity incidents, with a focus on minimising impact on staff and organisational wellbeing.
• Our multi-disciplinary experts: Also experienced in advising on consolidation of action plans and implementing learning processes to drive meaningful improvement.

Our clinical negligence lawyers working within our specialist nationwide maternity division can provide comprehensive advice to help healthcare organisations organise, deliver and evidence safe, equitable and compassionate maternity care. 

Included in our specialist offering, are free resources, training materials and information to healthcare organisations to help follow best practice and keep up to date on legal developments, available on our maternity resources hub

We are particularly mindful that the rapid national investigation into NHS maternity services in England has impacted and will impact many NHS Trusts and healthcare organisations and we continue to extend our support.

Please do get in touch to discuss how our specialist maternity team may be able to help.