GUILTY UK - Nurse Lucy Letby, murder of babies, 7 Guilty of murder verdicts; 8 Guilty of attempted murder; 2 Not Guilty of attempted; 5 hung re attempted #38

[Ruthbullock]

IN summary:

Hospital bosses failed to investigate allegations against Lucy Letby and tried to silence doctors, the lead consultant at the neonatal unit where she worked has told the BBC.
---The hospital also delayed calling the police despite months of warnings that the nurse may have been killing babies.

---The unit's lead consultant Dr Stephen Brearey first raised concerns about Letby in October 2015.

---No action was taken and she went on to attack five more babies, killing two.

Thanks for putting that all together. I’m not negating the issue with management- but there is also an email from the Thirlwall
Inquiry between the doctors discussing the case and one consultant within the chain states that if they believe this to be the truth they need to go to the police . They still didn’t go to the police, nor even the managers at that point- whilst telling another colleague they were convinced this was the answer to what was going on for x y and z reasons. If I believed harm was being caused and had evidence- I would be insisting people listen, I would be attending the briefings and my colleagues who agreed would be backing me and making sure someone was available to attend the meetings after incidents, I would be following colleagues advice and taking the few who agreed to the police, I would have been following the safeguarding policy at the time which didn’t only include reporting to management, but also to the external council body to be involved (LADO)- they didn’t do any of it. You can explain over and over what the did, but to convince me they did everything in their remit correctly- you need to justify why the didn’t do the things they were supposed to do as well. This involves moving from newspaper reporting about Letby on trial (which was not about the doctors and consultants) to reading the inquiry documents and interviews (which is focused on why this happened for such a prolonged period.)

If you go right back to the beginning and you worked there and believed someone was causing harm, you didn’t know who or what and escalated it without deciding to become your own self indulgent poirot to solve the case- the management and external agencies would have been keeping a much closer eye on what was going on and being recorded, we will never know whether it would have taken just as long, longer or less time to come to same or a different conclusion- but those channels couldn’t even start operating as they wanted to investigate themselves.

If you suspect something is rotting in your workplace, it always becomes less credible when you start making accusations- management want to be able to do unbiased investigations without fanfare or random unsubstantiated suspicions being thrown around and that is the case in any workplace.

It was brought up about contacting LADO many times in the inquiry with the doctors, they had no response to why they never made contact despite it being policy . Even the initial police discussion with the consultants asked them why they hadn’t contacted their local LADO and was possibly one of the reasons they didn’t initially pick up the investigation when it was first referred.

 

[Charlot123]

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Cyclical patterns of events are expected to happen. We live on Earth, where everything cycles, starting with the seasons. Sometimes we can say why cycles of events happen, sometimes we can't.

But if we can't, it would be expected to rule out natural reasons before one starts looking for serial killers on the units. Not that they can't happen, but with such outliers, one has to rule out the real reasons first.

They never invited the external observer to look at their own practices. They just said, "we did everything as before".

And then when Lucy Letby is already in jail, we find out that Dr. Jayaram has poor understanding of ventilation principles, that dr. Breary lacerated the baby's liver, that Dr. Gibbs didn't see a neonate under his care for three days, and that there was Pseudomonas on the unit.

BTW, what these doctors did, IMHO, falls under "mistakes inevitable on a very busy unit, with limited funds, and overwhelmed medical personnel", nothing else. But why put a nurse behind bars for it? On no evidence?

 

[JimmyDurham]

Cyclical patterns of events are expected to happen. We live on Earth, where everything cycles, starting with the seasons. Sometimes we can say why cycles of events happen, sometimes we can't.

But if we can't, it would be expected to rule out natural reasons before one starts looking for serial killers on the units. Not that they can't happen, but with such outliers, one has to rule out the real reasons first.

They never invited the external observer to look at their own practices. They just said, "we did everything as before".

And then when Lucy Letby is already in jail, we find out that Dr. Jayaram has poor understanding of ventilation principles, that dr. Breary lacerated the baby's liver, that Dr. Gibbs didn't see a neonate under his care for three days, and that there was Pseudomonas on the unit.

BTW, what these doctors did, IMHO, falls under "very busy unit, with limited funds, and overwhelmed medical personnel", nothing else. But why put a nurse behind bars for it? On no evidence?

Aye, 'reckon all of those considerations: the quality of the care, a struggling unit, a spike in the number of poorly babies being admitted, staffing issues, the infrastructure and so on; these are relevant to the case (as you say).

Needs a retrial. Too many qualified people disputing the prosecution's case with information that a jury hasn't heard. If that happened, with all of the information presented, I could see a hung jury.

 

[Ruthbullock]

What about the numerous people willing to testify in court about said rash. I think you will find that it does hold water.

Who were the numerous people in court who attributed it to a specific medical diagnosis, rather than just describing it and saying they witnessed a rash? The medical professionals couldn’t diagnose it in situ, nor did it bother some of them enough to research it afterwards- so whilst it was paraded as significant in court, in the moment it wasn’t. The few doctors who did start looking into it found a paper that confirmed their belief, but that author has subsequently said based on what you recorded in your medical notes you have misinterpreted it.

 

[Charlot123]

There were many other unexpected unexplained collapses with Letby on duty which were investigated but due the possibility of natural causes were dropped from the investigation.
Ben Myers could have called a statistician, wonder why he didn't ? Maybe it was because adding a load more collapses where Letby was present wouldn't actually have helped her case.

It would be interesting to know whether such shift sheets were also done for each doctor and registrar on the unit, or for nurses only?

I suspect, for nurses. You know why I think so? Many times, senior doctors were not physically present on the unit. The baby doesn't open bowels for three days - dr. Gibbs doesn't see him, just orders ranitidine over the phone.

So I understand, the senior doctors could probably rule themselves out because they were not on the unit often enough.

But this very factor could contribute to untoward events.

 

[Ruthbullock]

It wasn't about a simple spike in deaths. It was about a spike in both deaths AND SERIOUS INCIDENTS which were completely out of the blue had no obvious cause. That is incredibly unusual to the point of unheard of on neonatal units.

So if you were in that work environment you have a choice - follow all the available policy channels to report, or gather the evidence yourself over a year and then report. There’s a really sound reasoning why people are asked not to investigate and accuse colleagues themselves and should instead report things through proper channels- this case being the worst and strongest example ever.

 

[May72031]

Not according to the RSS and Professor Jane Hutton (medical statistician) and other statisticians also, including some from abroad. They believe the chart is evidentially valueless because of the methodology utilised in compiling it.

Yet, it isn't. And anyhow, it played a minor part of the trial evidence. I would love to know WHY Hutton and company would want incidents that are not considered as suspicious by medical experts, somehow included. To me, that would be rigging the chart to suit Letby, rather than the evidence.

Whether you or I believe it is besides the point. The point is that the jury didn't hear from these qualified people. They didn't get that side of the story.

The defence didn't call them. They had their reasons. Letbyists have resorted to some absolutely incredible conspiracy theories to try and get round this obstacle, even suggesting Myers was somehow in on it.

They were simply presented with the chart's final analysis, not the evolution, not the methodology and not the dissenting voices from people who know what they're talking about.

Pointing out its evolution would not have changed a thing.

In that event, it's not a fair trial.

You Letbyists can cling to this fantasy all you like, it was a fair trial.

 

[Ruthbullock]

Seriously ?
She had one of the best British silks representing her fgs !
Do you HONESTLY not think if he could have put an expert up on the stand to refute the prosecutions experts he would have done ?
He must have been asleep at the wheel eh ?

He may be brilliant- but has little experience in the area of medical deaths- he is currently working on greenfell.- another building failing, which seems to have been how he tried to evidence the Letby case.

Benjamin Myers KC specializes in Business and Financial Crime, General Crime, Regulatory Law, Professional Discipline and Inquests and Inquiries. Described as ‘brilliant’, ‘extremely astute’ ‘a superb jury advocate and lawyer’ with ‘an exceptional ability to digest complex cases’,

 

[May72031]

Aye, 'reckon all of those considerations: the quality of the care, a struggling unit, a spike in the number of poorly babies being admitted, staffing issues, the infrastructure and so on; these are relevant to the case (as you say).

None of those issues explain the sudden and unexpected collapses and deaths.

 

[May72031]

He may be brilliant- but has little experience in the area of medical deaths- he is currently working on greenfell.- another building failing, which seems to have been how he tried to evidence the Letby case.

Do you believe Myers worked alone on the case and didn't consult any medical experts?

 

[JimmyDurham]

We expect what to happen every year somewhere? If this is the case, can you any point any of these spikes out?

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals recorded 8 neonatal deaths in 2015.

 

[May72031]

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals recorded 8 neonatal deaths in 2015.

Were they all sudden and unexpected?

 

[JimmyDurham]

How unusual was the spike in neonatal deaths when Lucy Letby was working?

Our analysis, that even the preprint servers don't want you to see

lawhealthandtech.substack.com

The above is a link to a chart which shows neonatal deaths in hospitals across England.

In Letby's hospital, there were 9 in 2015 and 8 in 2016.

Other hospitals 2014: there were 7 in Bedford Hospital and 7 in Morecambe Bay Hospital.

Other hospitals 2015: there were 8 in Blackpool Hospital.

Other hospitals 2016: 7 in Blackpool Hospital and 7 in Kettering Hospital.

 

[JimmyDurham]

Were they all sudden and unexpected?

What do you think?

Were they all unexpected in Letby's case? Not according to some medical experts who have claimed that the babies suffered from complications that led to deaths due to natural causes.

 

[Ruthbullock]

I think you are misunderstanding what happened. Dr Shoo Lee has said his study had been misrepresented. But others disagreed and have shown evidence to support what the prosecution claimed at trial. And it was also shown that the jury made its decision upon other factors, such as the defendants many lies and inconsistencies in her testimony. And she was caught falsifying some of her medical notes and observations in order to try and show she was not in the same rooms as some of the victims---when there is proof that she was.

So what Dr Lee is claiming is unimportant because her guilty verdict was based upon many other pieces of evidence, beyond the colour of a rash.

So Dr Lee has come back to Professor Clarke and Clarke has admitted his error, so currently there is no professional who has publicly disagreed with Dr Lee.

With regards the rashes are unimportant, then you once again remove a bit of the whole picture, alongside stats and inaccurate insulin readings- this is why it needs re examining and the conviction becomes less secure.

 

[Sweeper2000]

So Dr Lee has come back to Professor Clarke and Clarke has admitted his error, so currently there is no professional who has publicly disagreed with Dr Lee.

With regards the rashes are unimportant, then you once again remove a bit of the whole picture, alongside stats and inaccurate insulin readings- this is why it needs re examining and the conviction becomes less secure.

Where'd you get that from? Bit about lee responding and Clarks response

 

[Ruthbullock]

You're right, the jury didn't hear these "experts" because she didn't call them! Her defence team would have had notification that the paper by Shoo Lee was going to be used. They could easily have found him and sought his opinion! There was no restriction as to time or expense so why didn't they?

For two reasons- 1. Money is restricted in a legal aid case- so money was an issue and 2. He isn’t allowed as a British expert witness, we don’t have the same flexibility as the US and whilst he wrote the paper and it was used as an example, Dr Lee himself could never be a witness. He could have written a report to be shared as he has done, but that can still be misinterpreted another flaw in our system.

 

[Ruthbullock]

Do you believe Myers worked alone on the case and didn't consult any medical experts?

Possibly- he may well have focused on the building contamination issues believing they would argue the failings in the neo natel unit, he wanted to use the royal college of nursing report as well- which was not permitted. You seem to think they had unlimited staffing money and resources to plough into one case- they will have come up with their strategy and run with it., whilst also having numerous other cases on the go.

 

[Ruthbullock]

Were they all sudden and unexpected?

The sheer volume of investigations and inquiries into various hospitals across the UK over neonatal deaths- suggests it’s a widespread issue, so it’s not wrong to assume there are a lot of sudden and unexpected deaths everywhere that are currently unexplained.

 

[marynnu]

So if you were in that work environment you have a choice - follow all the available policy channels to report, or gather the evidence yourself over a year and then report. There’s a really sound reasoning why people are asked not to investigate and accuse colleagues themselves and should instead report things through proper channels- this case being the worst and strongest example ever.

There were numerous reviews looking at the incidents. Are you seriously suggesting the consultants should act as police? They informed management, that should have been enough for action to be taken.