NSW nurse who triaged Pippa White before septic shock death tells inquest girl ‘didn’t meet criteria’ for rapid response

Pippa Mae White was taken to Cowra hospital in 2022 and died from sepsis at Orange hospital the next day. A coronial inquest into her death is investigating the medical care that Pippa received at both hospitals. Photograph: Supplied

The nurse who triaged a two-year-old girl who died of septic shock in regional New South Wales has told an inquest she doesn’t think she would have activated a rapid paediatric sepsis pathway for her if even if she had access to the document at the time.

Pippa Mae White died on 13 June 2022, two months before her third birthday, after doctors at the hospitals in Cowra and Orange assumed she had an acute viral illness, rather than the bacterial infection that resulted in her death.