Tale of Rory Staunton's Death Prompts New Medical Efforts Nationwide Travis Dove for The New York Times Ryan Christensen, right, a medical resident, and Jeffrey Woodard, an actor portraying a new father, monitored a robotic baby for symptoms of sepsis at a training session at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C. Long before 12-year-old Rory Staunton set foot in a hospital in March, the paths to the catastrophe awaiting him had been heavily trod. Told he had a minor bellyache, first by his pediatrician and then by a doctor in the emergency room at NYU Langone Medical Center, Rory was sent home with medicine to settle his stomach. Three days later, on April 1, he was dead from septic shock caused by an infection that had been present but not treated when he was seen by the doctors. Rory's case has prompted doctors, nurses and hospital administrators across the country to make new efforts to head off the kinds of problems that may have contributed to his death - some specifically related to early identification of sepsis, and others, long lamented, that hobble treatment of many ailments. Among them: critical test results that were not communicated, a lapse that occurs with startling frequency; important observations that vanished during the handoff of Rory's care from the family pediatrician to the emergency room; and an initial diagnosis that fit some of his symptoms, but no sign that the doctors considered alternatives. The fresh approaches now being put into place include simple measures like new checklists, as well as high-tech tactics like programming a patient's symptoms into training robots. Some reforms, involving a mandatory pause to brief parents on test results, are being tried out in three emergency rooms in the New York area to see if they would work as the model for a "Rory's Law." A symposium on detecting and treating sepsis, led by the New York State health commissioner, will be held Friday at the New York Academy of Medicine and will include a presentation by Rory's father, Ciaran Staunton. The case will also be the subject of a panel next month at Johns Hopkins Medical Center during an international conference on medical errors. For many doctors and nurses, Rory's case resonated because so much of what seemed to go wrong was utterly familiar. "I think it could have happened almost anywhere," said Dr. Jeremy Boal, the chief medical officer of 16 hospitals that are part of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, which has run aggressive sepsis-detection programs since 2008. It absolutely could have happened here. In July, Rory's parents, Ciaran and Orlaith Staunton, provided his medical records and a detailed chronology of his treatment for an About New York column in The New York Times. Their goal, the Stauntons said, was to wring from their grief a measure of redemption in better care for other children. In effect, they framed a challenge to the medical profession, Dr. Boal said: "It forced us to ask, if it could happen here, what can we do to make sure that it can't happen in the future?" Rory, a 5-foot-9, 169-pound sixth grader from Queens, cut his arm while diving for a basketball one spring afternoon in the school gym. He began vomiting after midnight. By the time he saw the family pediatrician later that day, he was running a high fever and suffering severe leg pain, and his skin was not returning to its normal color quickly when pressed with a finger. The vomiting and fever suggested a stomach bug to the pediatrician, who sent him to the emergency room at NYU Langone for fluids. A doctor in the emergency room thought he looked better after some intravenous liquids. He went home with an antinausea drug. Rory's body, however, was fighting an invader: a strain of bacteria that normally causes strep throat had gotten into his blood, apparently through the cut in his arm. His immune system was on the verge of a runaway, self-immolating response to the infection - a cascade of destructive processes known generally as sepsis. A number of signs pointed to the gathering intensity of that fight: the mottled skin noted by his pediatrician; the persistence of a very rapid pulse at NYU Langone; an abnormally high volume of immature white blood cells and significantly low numbers of platelets found by the hospital's laboratory. Taken together, those signs suggested that he could be in the grip of something more worrisome than a stomach virus. An earlier version of this article gave incorrect titles for two officials with the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. Dr. Jeremy Boal is the chief medical officer for 16 hospitals in the network, not the medical director. And Dr. John D'Angelo is the vice president for emergency medicine in the network, not the director of emergency services or the director of emergency medicine.