Dan O'Donoghue
@MrDanDonoghue
·
29m
Jury are now in court and Ms Letby is back in the witness box for the fourth day of cross examination. Mr Johnson asks Ms Letby if she would like to review anything she has said previously, she said no
Mr Johnson is turning to Child E. He was born prematurely in late July 2015 and initially needed breathing support, but later stabilised. The court heard that on 3 August, his mother heard him crying and found him with "blood coming out of his mouth".
The child's mother told the jury she recalled Ms Letby was standing at a nearby work station. Child E later deteriorated and despite medical efforts, later died on 4 August.
A medical expert for the prosecution said the blood loss he suffered could have been the result of an "inappropriate" use of a medical tool and his death was the result of internal bleeding and an injection of air.
Ms Letby is asked if medical incompetence contributed to Child E's death, she said 'possibly yes'
Asked to clarify, she says it could have been the responsibility of the medical team on that night. She says the doctors 'could have acted sooner' to respond to Child E's bleeding issue
Ms Letby also goes on to say that a 'contributing factor' could have been the unit being dirty - she says that the neonatal unit had a plumbing issues, with sewage coming out of sinks in nursery one
She says 'potentially that’s not a safe working environment' - Mr Johnson asks if she ever reported this via a a DATIX form, she says 'not personally no'
Jury are currently being shown a DATIX form that was raised by Ms Letby in relation to Child E. It contains a history of the baby boy, what happened and has contributions from consultants who reviewed the case
Ms Letby says the extent of her contribution on the form was reporting his death
Mr Johnson is now pulling up a timeline of events. He says Ms Letby was working the nightshift on August 2 to 3 2015 - he shows the court a text Ms Letby sent to a friend at 22:35 on 2 August in which she said the unit was 'too q word’
Ms Letby says it 'sometimes gets very quiet' on the unit and there can be a of 'sitting round'. She said she was 'there to help babies' She adds 'sometimes shifts can be long nights if you haven’t got as many babies on unit'
Mr Johnson asks her if she enjoyed being busy, she said she 'enjoyed being busy when it was managed'
Mr Johnson asks Ms Letby if she was confident in her abilities as a nurse, she says 'yes'. He asks her if she felt she was a 'cut above' some of the other nurses, she says 'no'
absolutely heartbreaking. There was no reason for his collapse and death. LL attempting to blame her colleagues for this is just terrible, when from the prosecutions evidence we can assume that something could have been done at 9pm if she had reported the bleeding when it was witnessed by baby E’s mum. This is going to be so upsetting today. Poor parents having to listen to this…
