I don't understand this at all. Lawsuits for what? Prosecution for what?
Besides doctor’s biggest fear - losing the patient - they are at a risk of lawsuits, be it serious or frivolous. They can be sued for any mistake. Medical systems are overloaded. It shows in odd forms, the head of an insurance company being shot, or plastic surgeons becoming the victims. But a tad more stress, and the doctors, too, may be accused of malfeasance.
Given this, Lucy Letby’s case is very dangerous because it shows how easy it is to persuade the community that a nurse is a murderer, without any motive or proof. It is enough if the doctor is “irrationally suspicious” or “influenced by gossips” or however this case started.
The same can happen to a doctor. Any physician unlucky enough to run into someone hysterical, paranoid, vindictive or jealous? The precedent exists, and the script is written.
Look at Lucy Letby’s case in a nutshell.
There are doctors' unproven, intense fears. On this base, a huge sand castle is erected. You add a trial witness Dr. Evans running on demagoguery and sheer assumptions, without a single solid data. There is the judge geared up to convict. The jurors whose human fear is to mistakenly let out a murderer. These jurors have to rely on “the specialists involved”. (I don’t blame the jurors. It was impossible to get through mounds of circumstantial evidence and one doctor’s lie). And, mainly, there is the media that has labeled Letby the "killer nurse" pre-trial. One doesn't need the crystal ball now: Lucy Letby ends up in jail "where she belongs", as one doctor happily concludes.
Today the sand castle has crumbled. There is no single solid fact serving as the proof that Lucy Letby was the murderer. But she is still in jail.
Now doctors… they are overwhelmed, burned out, tired or merely have a bad string of luck (winter season or intra-hospital infection). If at this very moment a doctor is unlucky to spat with a vindictive colleague or a nurse, an unhinged patient or a relative, then suspicions of “harming the patients” might easily mount. And now we do have a “rinse, repeat” protocol. With each medical system getting overloaded, things may start happening.
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