A FIT and healthy man died in hospital from sepsis despite his doctor mum’s pleas for life-saving antibiotics, an inquest has heard.

William Hewes died aged 22 at Homerton University Hospital in east London in January 2023 just 12 hours after being admitted.

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The student was said to be fit and healthy before he suffered a meningococcal infection that led to meningitis, which eventually developed into deadly sepsis.

Nursing staff and medics treating William repeatedly failed to act on his doctor mum’s desperate pleas for live-saving antibiotics, the inquest at Bow Coroner’s Court heard.

According to the family’s lawyers, they believe the hospital failed to ensure antibiotics were administered to William as soon as possible and within an hour of his arrival, as per national guidelines.

They say this happened despite Dr Burns repeatedly raising the alarm that he needed them and had not received them.

The inquest heard that workers did not ensure he was given the appropriate medication, long after it had been concluded he was suffering from sepsis, which can be fatal.

Emergency department registrar Dr Rebecca McMillan admitted she was not clear in giving instructions to administer antibiotics to William.

On top of this, a senior nurse said she forgot to check the specific medication required, while the nurse-in-charge failed to ensure that antibiotics had been administered.

William had arrived at the hospital at 12.06am and was admitted to the hospital’s resuscitation area, or “resus”, but only received antibiotics at around 1.25am.

Dr McMillan grew emotional as she told the coroner how she would have done things differently and that she believed William might die from the moment she saw him.

She became “immediately very concerned” about sepsis in the young student after she examined him and said she then told nurses in resus the type and dose of antibiotics William needed.

However, she admitted: “I don’t know that I was clear who I was directing my instruction to.”

After leaving resus at 12.42am, she told the court she would have expected the antibiotics to be administered within 10 minutes of her departure.

However, she realised William had not received the life-saving medicine more than 30 minutes later at 1.17am.

Dr McMillan recalled standing outside the resus room with nurse Maria Balatico who noticed how upset she was having realised the antibiotics were not 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.”

Balatico’s previous evidence to the court, which explained she had not been told which antibiotics to give and was instead concentrating on relieving William’s symptoms, was relayed by coroner Mary Hassell.

The nurse said: “The antibiotics slipped my mind.”

Medical registrar Luke Lake, who was 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.

When he took this action, Dr McMillan became alerted to the fact William had not been given antibiotics.

The court was told that Dr Burns recorded in her statement she flagged to Dr Lake that her son had not been given antibiotics, and that he then went to investigate.

However, the doctor disputed this, saying she may have asked him about the medicine after he had already queried it with other medical staff.

ASSUMPTIONS ‘OVERSIGHT’

Both Dr McMillan and Dr Lake said, upon reflection, they felt their communication with Dr Burns was influenced by the fact she was a senior consultant.

Additionally, they admitted that had they treated William’s mum as a lay person, they would have pulled her aside and been more frank about how unwell William was.

Dr Lake also said that this would have allowed him to better hear about her concerns, including about whether the 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 William 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 William but also explained that he had 60-80 other patients to look after on the night.

The inquest continues on Friday.