Merope Mills rightly refers to “a culture dominated by hierarchy, status and overconfidence” – clinicians depriving patients and their families of agency and confidence, thus wasting an important source of intimate patient expertise (My daughter Martha died needlessly in hospital – we believe this change would have saved her, 4 September).
Martha’s Rule is an excellent idea to empower patients and their loved ones when they are at their most vulnerable, confronted with a clinicians’ culture used to withholding and downplaying bad news, or blaming patients for their own misfortune. All of this happened in my daughter’s case.
