1:52pm
Ms Rees says that she decided not to exclude Letby from the Neonatal Unit at that stage on Friday as she had been given no detail in support of the concerns by either Dr Brearey or Dr Jayaram She had received substantial reassurance from Ms Powell and had not been instructed to exclude Letby in her conversation with the Director of Nursing and Quality, Ms Kelly.
In her statement to the Inquiry, Ms Kelly says that Ms Rees was “very upset” and that it came as a complete shock to be told that two consultants thought that Letby was intentionally harming babies. Ms Kelly reports that she agreed with Ms Rees that the concerns were very worrying but that there was insufficient basis to remove Letby.
Despite the expression of concerns from the two most senior consultant paediatricians, no decision was made to remove Letby from the unit during the Friday.
1:53pm
At 4pm, Child P deteriorated suddenly and died. Letby was found guilty of his murder.
Dr Brearey telephoned Ms Rees at home requesting that Letby be taken off the ward. This was not done.
After the deaths of two of the triplets, the father of O, P and [R] was so worried that something was going to happen to [baby R] that he requested that [baby R] be taken to Liverpool Women’s Hospital. [R] was taken there. As Mr Baker KC notes in his opening submissions, “Mother OPR and Father OPR believe, justifiably so, that this decision saved the life of [Child R]”.
1:55pm
Ms Langdale KC moves to the case of Child Q.
On June 25, Child Q collapsed unexpectedly. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charge of attempted murder.
Ms Kelly has told the Inquiry that she was not told about Child Q’s collapse, despite what she says was agreed in the May meeting. On June 26, Dr Brearey emailed Ms Kelly referring to the “2 mortalities last week” and inviting Ms Kelly and Mr Harvey to a senior paediatricians meeting at noon on Monday 27 June 2016 at which the mortalities would be discussed.
Dr Brearey has stated that he telephoned Mr Harvey after the meeting to inform him that the meeting agreed that Mr Harvey should be asked to remove Letby from the NNU until the cause of the deaths had been adequately investigated.
1:57pm
Every week there was a meeting of the Executive Directors Group, to which all Executive Directors were invited. The records of their meetings suggest there had been no discussions about unexplained instances of infant mortality or of concerns about a rise in the death rate on the neonatal unit prior to June 2016.
That was to change.
The deaths of two of the triplets, Child O and Child P, catapulted the issue of Letby and neonatal mortality to the top of the Executive Team agenda.
Ms Langdale adds: "Whether it should have been there before, will be a matter for you [Lady Justice Thirlwall] to determine in due course."
The public inquiry into the events surrounding the crimes of child serial killer nurse Lucy Letby begins today (Tuesday, September 10).
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