If You Are Worried About Your Partner's Care

You are allowed to raise a concern

Partners hesitate for predictable reasons: you are not the patient, you are not medically trained, staff are visibly busy, and you do not want to be difficult. None of that makes your observation worthless. You have a baseline on this person that nobody on the ward has. You know what they look like when they are coping and what they look like when they are not.

Tommy's is direct about the role. You know their wishes, fears, worries and past experiences better than the doctors or midwives do, and it may be up to you to ask for explanations and speak up, especially if they are overwhelmed or feel under pressure. That is the job, not an overreach of it.

Start with plain words, not a complaint

The most effective escalation is usually the least confrontational one. Say what you have noticed, say why it worries you, and ask for a specific thing.

Something like: "She has been saying she has a severe headache for two hours and she has vomited twice. I am worried. Can someone check her blood pressure now?" That is better than "we are not happy", because it gives a clinician an observation, a concern and an action.

Write times down. A phone note with what happened and when is not paranoia; it is the thing that makes the third conversation coherent when you are exhausted.

Ask who is in charge

If the answer you get does not match what you are seeing, ask to speak to the midwife in charge of the shift, the labour ward coordinator, or the on-call obstetric consultant. Tommy's names this explicitly: if you do not feel the birthing person is being listened to properly, you may want to ask to talk to a senior midwife or a consultant. Asking for a named role is a normal request and it changes the conversation.

Martha's Rule, in England

England now has a formal route for exactly this situation. NHS England describes Martha's Rule as giving you "the right to request a rapid review if you're worried that your or your loved one's condition is getting worse", and its patient-facing information explains how to call for a rapid review from a different team if you remain worried and feel your concerns are not being addressed.

Two things to know. It is being introduced through a pilot, which NHS England says is currently running across 143 hospital sites, so not every hospital has it yet. And it exists because of a specific failure: NHS England records that Martha Mills died in 2021 after developing sepsis in hospital, that her family's concerns about her deteriorating condition were not responded to, and that in 2023 a coroner ruled she would probably have survived had she been moved to intensive care earlier.

If your hospital is a participating site, there will be posters and leaflets explaining how to trigger it. Ask at the nurses' station. If it is not, the underlying principle still holds: you can ask for a review by a different team.

Consent is not yours, but the questions are

There is an important distinction that stops escalation going wrong. Birthrights sets out that healthcare professionals must give a person the information they need before seeking consent, covering material risks, alternative treatments and the risks of doing nothing, and cites the Supreme Court decision in Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board on what counts as a material risk. Birthrights also states that if a person does not think their healthcare professionals are listening when they refuse consent, they can contact the charity for advice.

The right to accept or refuse belongs to your partner, not to you. Tommy's is unambiguous that even though it is your baby, you have no legal right to decide how or where they give birth. What you can do is make sure the information arrives, that it is understood, and that a refusal is heard rather than talked over.

Useful questions to ask out loud

What are you worried about? What are the alternatives? What happens if we wait, and how long can we safely wait? Who else can look at this? Can we have that written in the notes? Those five questions cover most situations and none of them are aggressive.

What NICE expects of staff

It is worth knowing the standard, because it helps you name a gap rather than a feeling. NICE's intrapartum care guideline asks staff to explain all procedures and observations before they take place and to ask for consent, to show the woman and her birth companions how to summon help and reassure her she can do so whenever she needs to, and to involve her in any handover of care at the end of a shift.

NICE also says a woman in established labour should not be left on her own except for short periods or at her own request. If that is not happening, that is a concrete thing to raise with the coordinator.

PALS, and what it is actually for

The NHS describes PALS, the Patient Advice and Liaison Service, as offering confidential advice, support and information on health-related matters, and as a point of contact for patients, their families and their carers. Most hospitals in England have one.

PALS is useful for problems that are not clinical emergencies: communication that has broken down, wanting something explained, needing help resolving a concern without making a formal complaint. It is not the route for "something is wrong right now". For that, escalate on the ward.

If it is an emergency and you are not being heard

Do not wait politely. Pull the call bell, say clearly that you think this is an emergency, and ask for the consultant. If your partner has been discharged home and you are worried, use the maternity triage number in the notes, or 999 if you think it is life-threatening. Being wrong and embarrassed is a far better outcome than being right and late.

Afterwards

If something went badly and it was not addressed, you can ask for a debrief with a senior clinician, and PALS can help arrange it. Doing that also matters for you: partners who watched a concern get dismissed often carry it long after the clinical episode is closed, and having it explained is part of putting it down.