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!

No, it was a completely toxic environment and the main reason I left

I hope that, during the course of this trial, the context against which the alleged events took place is explored.

Before becoming a foundation trust in 2004, the trust received top 3-star rating in the former national performance charts.[12] In 2016, the CQC rated the hospital as requiring improvement.[13]

The Trust lost the contract for sexual health services when Cheshire West and Chester Council awarded it to East Cheshire NHS Trust in December 2014.[14]

In 2015/6 it cancelled urgent operations 37 times - the highest number of any NHS trust in England.[15]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countess_of_Chester_Hospital#Performance

I have no opinion on LL's guilt or innocence at this stage but this was not a well run hospital.

Child N, the haemophiliac baby, was a horrifying read. They think someone inflicted injury or injected him with air. He was in so much pain and distress that he screamed for 30 minutes.

The medical expert said they had never observed a premature neonate to scream before.

That poor poor boy 😔

Horrific😥

Again this could be circumstantial, i always worked in mental health so my experience of nursing is different, but the unit I worked kn had three suicides in six weeks this was incredibly rare and even more randomly one suicide waa discovered by a male nurse who was the husband of a female nurse who discovered a second suicide a couple of weeks later on a different ward ,sadly it was just random ,rarely where there suicides anyway there was just a very sad cluster at one point in time none again for many years

Is there a plausible explanation for not suspending Letby and simply moving her to day shifts?

Surely that could work in her defence. Concerns could not have been that strong or real at all, if all you did was move her to day shifts. You thought this individual night be killing babies either intentionally or through sheer incompetence, but you allowed her to keep working on the same ward. It sounds off. I'd be furious if I had been a parent with a baby who spent any time on that ward to hear that. Even if that baby never came to harm.

One could feasibly even suggest it was something they came up with later to make it look like steps were taken/people were concerned and not simply negligent and taking charge of things. Because it doesn't reflect well.

What proof is there that these concerns were real and discussed among senior staff and the move of LL to day shifts purposely made?

Anyone who is/has worked for a hospital trust know what should have happened with such suspicions/why more direct action wasn't taken?

I do mean to intend that suspicion of LL was valid. I have no idea if she is innocent or not. Nothing I've heard thus far, seems more than circumstantial.

I just read the reporting from today and the paediatrician who was so concerned he went to find her didn't write up his concerns or that the monitor wasn't going off when it should have been. I can see the defence have quite a bit to work with. Unless we are going to get hard evidence but that would have stopped her nursing surely.

Ime if there's any concerns about a nurses ability to care for patients adequately and there is a feeling patients are being put at risk considering the fact these patients were extremely vulnerable neonatal babies than every effort should have been made to remove her immediately, suspension and immediate investigation would have been the road to go down

I do know that members of staff have been suspended when they have made unintentional non malicious drug errors while it was investigated , they haven't been sacked but they had to do further training and be supervised/mentored for a few months until they were happy she was fit for practice again.
Which brings me to another point , why on earth wasn't she reported to the NMC anonymously by a member of staff who was working with her if they had misgivings?
This just doesn't make any sense.

Thanks @x2boys That course of action makes sense, considering how vulnerable the babies were. It simply doesn't stack up that they didn't pull her from her role. In fact, that would have been one way to see if any concerns might be valid. Are there ongoing cases of baby deaths at the same frequency after this person's suspension?

I don't understand that they didn't even have her supervised at the very least. Yet they supposedly were concerned there was a correlation between her presence and the deterioration of the neonatal babies?!

I'm afraid on the face of it it sounds like back covering. Although it comes across worse actually, if true. This Unit/Hospital Trust sounds lacking in leadership and decisive decision making.

I'm afraid on the face of it it sounds like back covering. Although it comes across worse actually, if true. This Unit/Hospital Trust sounds lacking in leadership and decisive decision making.

I feel like this tbh. Maybe influenced by recalling the now vanished support page

What support page?

There used to be a website supporting her.

@DysonSpheres the accused was pulled from their role and according to the reports cases did go down

Could the prosecution be hypothesising that she was shifted onto days for this reason, or is there written record from that time which states it?

Also intrigued by how long it took anyone to raise suspicions. I worked in a hospital that had one attempted murder from a medication poisoning. There were plenty of (subsequently unfounded) rumours about who was involved long before any arrests were made, and I heard these whilst working in a completely separate department.

I wonder how much these concerns were raised to fit the case rather than the events led to concerns IYSWIM. There are a lot of holes in the prosecution case and it's so early on.

Hypothetically - if the hospital had fabricated a case against LL would the prosecuting lawyers be aware of this? If so how grim is that.

Time will tell as more evidence is released. I have a very open mind about this case. So far it seems circumstantial but there is obviously a lot more evidence

I honestly thought all hospitals would have cctv too . I guess it depends on the layout but still

It could be the case that LL may have been guilty of one or two offences but they're piling more accusations in order to offload blame.

You could not possibly have CCTV in clinical areas. The sheer indignity of it, never mind the huge scale of the data and privacy risks.

The prosecution wrap up their opening statement tomorrow and the defence's opening statement will start.
By all accounts LL has a 'brilliant' high profile defence lawyer who has had previous success with high profile cases involving alleged child murder.

www.exchangechambers.co.uk/people/benjamin-myers-kc/

Who would be paying for this? I don't think his services will be coming cheap.

Is he doing it for free l wonder? Perhaps he is convinced of her innocence and wants to help her , it could be that . It could be so many reasons though . I saw her parents and they looked like decent folks caught in the headlights. That's just LL's parents let alone the babies parents . It's all very sad.