A new NHS initiative has been launched, called Jess’s Rule, urging GP’s to take action if a patient attends three appointments with the same symptoms without a diagnosis being reached. This has been triggered by the tragic death of Jessica Brady, from Stevenage, who was a talented engineer at Airbus, and was described as a healthy young woman.

In July of 2020, she didn’t feel at her best and contacted her GP Practice repeatedly over the next five months complaining of her symptoms which were getting worse. Jessica was losing a lot of weight unintentionally, as well as suffering night sweats, chronic fatigue, a persistent cough and very enlarged lymph nodes. During this time, she saw 6 different doctors at her GP surgery and had 3 face to face consultations.

In spite of reporting these concerning symptoms, the GPs were dismissive and no referral to a specialist was made. Due to Jess’s age, the treating GPs didn’t consider her symptoms to be serious or likely to be anything sinister, with it being suggested that it was related to long covid and that she was ‘too young for cancer’.

Jessica struggled to advocate for herself and seemingly lost hope in the GPs. Jess and her family decided to arrange a private appointment and Jessica was referred to a specialist. However, by this time, it was too late. Jess was given a terminal cancer diagnosis of adenocarcinoma, cancer of the glands that line the organs, in November 2020 and died three weeks later – just days before Christmas 2020.

Following her death, her family have advocated for ‘Jess’s Rule’, in the hope that it will serve a reminder to GPs to take a “three strikes and rethink approach”. The Royal College of General Practitioners has been involved in drawing up the guidance, in the hope that it can avoid other patients having to suffer as Jess did. It is hoped that, as part of Jess’s legacy, GPs will recognise that a patient has attended an appointment on three occasions complaining of the same symptom, and thereafter will take some form of action, including a referral for a second opinion.

Research suggests that younger patients and people from ethnic minority backgrounds often face delays before being diagnosed with a serious condition, because their symptoms aren’t similar to those of white or older patients.

Younger people, like Jess, can also be dismissed simply because they appear to be too young to have a serious illness.

Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has described Jess’s death as “a preventable and unnecessary tragedy” and has said that he hopes that the rule would improve patient safety by helping GPs to ” make sure every patient receives the thorough, compassionate,

and safe care that they deserve, while supporting our hard-working GPs to catch potentially deadly illnesses”.

If you have suffered misdiagnosis or delay in diagnosis related to any form of cancer and you have a worse prognosis as a result of this, you may have a claim for clinical negligence. Please contact our experienced team on 01482 323697 to discuss how we can help.