At Adelaide Medical Centre, we support the implementation of Jess’s Rule: Three Strikes and we rethink.

This is a patient-safety initiative introduced in September 2025, led by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England and supported by the Royal College of General Practitioners. It was developed in memory of Jessica Brady who sadly died of cancer in December 2020 at the age of 27.

Under this rule, GPs and other primary care healthcare staff are encouraged to critically re-evaluate the situation if a patient presents on a third occasion with the same symptom or concerns. Re-evaluation may be appropriate if the patient’s condition remains unresolved, their symptoms are escalating, or they have no established diagnosis to explain their symptoms.

GPs are faced with uncertainty on a daily basis: to get to the bottom of unclear cases they frequently draw on a combination of their experience, clinical discretion, guidelines and discussion with colleagues.

We hope that adopting Jess’ Rule reinforces this principle by explicitly encouraging our clinicians to revisit patient records, challenge initial assumptions, discuss with colleagues and remain alert to subtle warning signs. We hope this will in turn reduce diagnostic delays, encourage proactive intervention and onward referrals, improve quality of care and potentially save lives.