Lucy Letby Court Case

[Pebble21uk]

Today has been the first day of the trial, which is expected to last for six months. One thread has already been pulled on the subject. Upon deletion MNHQ said that a thread about the case is fine but please read the rules around contempt of court before posting... these are copied and pasted here:
Publicly commenting on a court case:

You might be in contempt of court if you speak publicly or post on social media.
For example, you should not:
say whether you think a person is guilty or innocent
refer to someone’s previous convictions
name someone the judge has allowed to be anonymous, even if you did not know this
name victims, witnesses and offenders under 18
name sex crime victims
share any evidence or facts about a case that the judge has said cannot be made public

If any of the above take place then new threads will also be pulled. Let's please try and keep it going!

Apparently Countess of Chester has been substandard for years prior to the alleged incidents. The cynical part of me does wonder if LL was thrown under the bus to take the blame for poor safety in maternity care.

I may have bias though as I have been on the receiving end of horrific maternity care and this was traumatic - but the lasting trauma for me stems from the lying and covering up done by my trust when I complained. My personal experience has left me with the view that NHS trusts will stop at nothing to cover up bad behaviour of staff.

However, I have no view either way about LL's guilt or innocence.

I think they will stop at nothing to cover the managers arses, but they will definitely throw ,junior staff members under the bus to save face
I'm not saying that's what happened here just ime of working for a large NHS Trust

Having been involved in cover ups in the nhs I can see why you have this view . Again I also have no opinion on the innocence or guilt of LL but I do know first hand how there are serious issues within units and a culture of cover up at any cost

Well you would certainly suspend them from duty pending investigation.

@x2boys I am following this case with interest due to my experiences. If it is the case that LL is innocent then falsely accusing her, and causing so much more trauma for the families, is just as evil as what LL is accused of.

Well indeed, going off track a bit but if you saw the panorama documentary a couple of weeks ago about the abusive behaviour of staff towards patients in the Edenfield centre which is part of Greater Manchester Mental health Trust?
I used to work for that trust and its huge I can well imagine there' would have Been some cover up if it hadn't Been exposed so publicly.

Would a cover up really go so far as to potentially frame somebody for murder though? It's possible the consequences wouldn't be clear until later down the line. A white lie about notes one day, a colleague accused of murder months later iyswim. What a mess. Let's hope the families get answers.

Well I guess we can't speculate and this is on a whole different level to most things ..

@LoisWilkersonslastnerve it's possible a situation of blaming staff could start just to deflect blame but then end up like a runaway train and nobody can get off. If this was the case then further down the line then maybe nobody could whistleblow due to fear of not just professional but legal repercussions, publicity etc.

Re Edenfield I do not believe for one minute that senior NHS management didn't know about this.

Another member of staff had suspicions about her after he saw her by Baby K's cot doing nothing despite alarms going off. The baby's breathing tube had been displaced as well. She allegedly tried to kill this baby 3 times before succeeding on the 4th. His concerns went unreported. If she is guilty (and I'm not saying that she is) he should face some type of work disciplinary.

@evenmoreshite In the end, all the possible scenarios are awful. Probably why the trial will take months. There's a lot to untangle. We can only hope the truth comes out.

Me either .

Has it been documented anywhere if LL had a religion / was religious ?

It’s terrible. I feel for the jury that is going to be so difficult

@whataflower off topic but can I ask what happens behind the scenes during a cover up? Do junior staff get roped in to this and find they can't get out? I found the heads of service dealing with my case to be utterly sadistic and one was visibly enjoying my trauma.

l worked in the SCBU in my local hospital as a Childrens staff nurse for a while , it only had 3 intensive care cots , 12 cots in all , so it wasn't a huge unit but the death of a baby was very few and far between thankfully . l worked there for 13 months in all and we only had 1 death in that time , perhaps l was lucky l don't know . Sometimes the babies were not well but there was never anything like the amount of emergencies that occurred in this unit . Their observations and appearance and feeding were monitored really well , so there was usually an indication that the baby was becoming unwell & everything was done to prevent a deterioration in their condition. l honestly don't know how all these babies died and others were injured over such a long period of time without it being discovered . It would be something that was talked about freely with your colleagues, when you look after these little ones you are so responsible for them & you do become involved with them & their families , it's normal imho . So the staff would be talking about this constantly among themselves . I don't understand how it took so long to be seen .

The Clothier Report in 94 {Beverley Allit} is drummed into every Paediatric student nurse from practically day one in Uni , so it's not as if it's not common knowledge that these things can happen . I really cannot fathom how this has happened over such a long time .

@TheNewlmprovedMrsMadEvans The prosecution made a point to state that another nurse said the same thing.

She wasn’t as experienced as LL and we don’t know how long this nurse had been working as a nurse for, but Child C’s incident was the first time she had seen a baby collapse and resuscitated. That’s how uncommon it was. And yet, this was the third collapse to have had happened in that neonatal unit within the space of a few days.

LL had been working at the hospital since 2011 - so four years without apparent incident or suspicion. I can see how that might make colleagues sceptical she could allegedly have anything to do with the crimes... it must have seemed to come out of the blue.

Does anyone know if she was working in NICU all that time?

We had a 3 cases when complaints were being investigated and each time a group was set up and the most junior members were given tasks to do. It wasn’t an option to say ok or question it. On one occasion we were asked to perform a test on another member of staff so that the ‘normal’ result could be inserted into a patients notes as they had complained it was negligent that a certain test hadn’t been carried out - it had been but we were told to do it , stick the patients name label over the date/time and copy it, add to notes and dispose of the original so the label couldn’t be peeled off and true date and time revealed. We couldn’t ask questions we just did as we were told.
we were also told when questioned about any incidents to say we didn’t remember who else was on shift that day even if we did etc

*hadn’t been

One doctor I worked with once broke down in tears and said he was ‘a dogsbody’ and had ‘no choice but to do as I’m told’. He had been given the task of bullying a patient into a procedure they didn’t want and felt guilty but said he hadn’t been given a choice - he was told to record in the notes that the patient initiated the subject when they hadn’t as it wasn’t appropriate for us to push something repeatedly but he was told to do so and to record otherwise

@whataflower I take it there is no-one to whistleblow to in such a situation? What would the consequences of this be?

Medical document fraud is a criminal offence, I had this done to me.