In November 2025, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) updated its approach to sepsis care. For the first time, it split its universal sepsis guideline into three separate guidelines — with one specifically for pregnant or recently pregnant people.
The new guideline — NICE NG255 — highlights the unique ways sepsis can present in pregnancy and early motherhood, and tailors how medical professionals should recognise, diagnose, and manage sepsis in the early stages.
When sepsis develops during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postnatal period, you might be told it progressed “too quickly to stop”. However, studies estimate that around 63% of maternal sepsis deaths may be preventable.
When warning signs are missed and the infection isn’t treated in time, you’re entitled to question if more could and should have been done in those crucial hours.
Key takeaways:
- The ‘golden hour’ is the first 60 minutes after suspected sepsis, when fast antibiotic treatment significantly improves survival rates
- Pregnancy-related physical changes make sepsis harder to recognise, leading to dangerous delays in treatment
- Families affected by substandard care and treatment may be able to pursue clinical negligence claims to obtain compensation
Why the golden hour matters
The first 60 minutes after a person is suspected of having sepsis are vital. In that time, hospital staff should assess the mother, recognise any risk factors, and begin antibiotics immediately.
To understand the importance of the golden hour, you need to think of sepsis like a rapidly spreading fire. Early intervention contains the flames, but once it takes hold, the damage becomes harder to stop and sometimes impossible to reverse.
Each hour without treatment lets bacteria and toxins do more damage to the mother’s body. That’s why hospitals use the one-hour target as a standard for good care. In fact, studies show that each hour of delay in giving antibiotics increases mortality by 8%.
What should happen in the golden hour?
If sepsis is suspected, medical professionals should implement the ‘Sepsis Six’ bundle. The UK Sepsis Trust developed the Sepsis Six — a set of six actions that must be completed within 1 hour. Carrying out the Sepsis Six bundle has been shown to reduce the risk of death by 46.6%.
The six tasks include:
- Oxygen administration
- IV fluids
- IV antibiotics
- Lactate measurement
- Blood cultures (a blood test)
- Monitoring urine output
These steps are simple but can help patients stabilise and recover if done quickly.
Why is maternal sepsis so often missed?
Maternal sepsis accounts for 10.7% of global maternal deaths and ranks as one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in the UK.
One of the reasons it goes unnoticed is that maternal sepsis can masquerade as pregnancy, labour, or postpartum symptoms.
For example, a mother experiencing sepsis may have symptoms that look like:
- Postnatal fatigue
- Uterine cramping
- Wound pain after caesarean section
- Chills during breastfeeding
- Flu-like third-trimester symptoms
Recognition of sepsis during childbirth is difficult, too. Blood loss and increased activity can create symptoms that overlap with those of infection.
And it’s not just the symptoms. The environment matters too.
After birth
A delayed diagnosis can occur when women are discharged too quickly after delivery. Many hospitals send new mothers home within hours of an uncomplicated birth, and yet, sometimes the earliest symptoms don’t appear until later — fever, abdominal pain, unusual bleeding, or a sense that something’s “not right”.
It’s in these moments that mothers depend on GPs and midwives to recognise the red flags. When a GP or doctor fails to see potential sepsis or dismisses symptoms that need escalation, this can lead to dangerous delays in treatment.
Hospital negligence
Some maternal sepsis cases trace back to system-wide issues within the hospital. These might include:
- Understaffed maternity wards
- Delays in escalating concerns to senior staff
- Poor handovers between shifts
- Failure to follow national sepsis pathways (Sepsis Six).
If these problems lead to a delayed diagnosis or treatment for the mother, this could amount to hospital negligence.
Is there a difference between a tragic outcome and a negligent one in maternal sepsis cases?
The main difference between a tragic outcome and a negligent outcome is whether the doctors and nurses met the standard of care you’d expect.
Tragic outcomes happen when the medical team does what they should, but the patient still suffers.
Negligent outcomes, on the other hand, occur when healthcare providers miss warning signs, delay treatment, or otherwise fall short of what a reasonable medical professional would do in the same circumstances.
That’s when mistakes become preventable, and the law gets involved.
Clinical negligence in sepsis cases may be:
- Poor monitoring of temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate
- Delayed administration of antibiotics or incorrect dosing
- Poor communication between medical team members
- Failure to escalate care when a patient’s condition worsens
- Insufficient follow-up in the first 24 hours after childbirth
What happens as a result of sepsis negligence?
Sepsis is rapid, so negligent treatment can lead to life-threatening complications. Multi-organ failure can develop when infection spreads through the body. The heart, kidneys, liver, and lungs may shut down and require intensive care support.
According to the UK Sepsis Trust, around 40% of people report suffering from physical, cognitive, and/or psychological after-effects when they recover from sepsis.
Patients who survive can face permanent injury to multiple organ systems, such as brain damage from reduced oxygen supply. Some may also need amputations due to tissue death from poor blood flow.
The psychological impact ranges from trauma from the medical emergency to grief over complications that could’ve been prevented. Women can also lose their ability to have future children, and recovery often means months of rehabilitation and long-lasting medical care.
Hiring a medical negligence solicitor and reconstructing the missing hours
You can pursue a medical negligence claim if the healthcare providers fail to meet accepted standards of care. These claims require proving that negligence directly caused the complications or death.
That is why legal investigations are so important for sepsis negligence claims.
When we investigate maternal sepsis claims, we reconstruct the timeline by looking at:
- Midwifery notes
- Triage decisions
- Labour or postnatal ward observation charts
- Blood test results and timestamps
- Timing of antibiotic prescriptions
- Escalation attempts (or lack of)
- Staffing levels and handover notes
We also work closely with maternal sepsis experts who analyse whether earlier treatment or recognition would have prevented the outcome for the mother, the baby, or both.
Contact our Maternal Sepsis Negligence Lawyers
Our priority is getting you clarity — something the hospital often fails to provide.
No family should have to deal with maternal sepsis alone or feel they are being left in the dark about what happened. At Friends Legal, our team understand the speed of sepsis and the impact it leaves. Contact us today to find out how we can help you.
