Dr. Ciara Martin:

I am a children’s emergency consultant and have worked for more than 20 years. Sepsis is one of those areas that we all fear and need to act really quickly on. There have been improvements with, say, vaccinations so we do not see the same number of children coming in with florid meningitis, for example. The emphasis is getting treatment to families as soon as possible and also trying to understand the more subtle signs. Both Deputies Durkan and Shortall mentioned that the parents often know better. We really teach all our staff that if a parent is concerned that is a red flag for us, so much so that it is built in to the paediatric early warning score. Every child coming into an inpatient unit is scored on an early warning score and the parent concern is the top line on that.