Lucy Letby denied leave to appeal

[Viviennemary]

Just heard on the news Lucy Letby the convicted serial killer has been denied leave to appeal. Good decision I think. She should stay behind bars for the rest of her life.

Staff had complained. Plenty of times. And changes were made eventually. A big one was the unit was downgraded so they could no longer take on the sickest babies because they could not provide that level of care.

It happens in all areas. When too many incidents occur it gets looked at, and then policies are made/changed and training given. My old hospital had a run of hyponatraemia incidents. It took well over a year before they changed the policy and made everyone do mandatory training on it. It happened with morphine overdoses too. These things take (too much) time because they have to go through so many stages.

People think the deaths suddenly stopped when LL was removed from the ward, but it could also have been because changes had been put in place that just happened to coincide with this.

People keep saying ‘healthy’ babies - these were NOT healthy babies! Any baby in NICU or SCBU is medically fragile in some way. The babies who became mottled had a mother who was unwell and I think one of them had an incorrectly placed line ? ( please correct me if I’m wrong) another was a 27 weeker less than 2lb. I don’t know specifics of others but the very fact they were on scbu/ nicu means they were not ‘healthy’

I’m not sure if this is correct but wasn’t there a lot of stillbirths at that hospital in the same time frame ?

Three babies had blood results suggestive of exogenous insulin. Only the two LL was on duty for were part of the court case. Why was the third case not suspicious?

It is assumed that TPN bags were injected with insulin but as there was no suspicion of foul play at the time the used bags were not retained for testing so even if we accept that the babies were poisoned we have no proof about how it was administered.

TPN is prepared in pharmacy, clinical staff do not inject any additives into the bags. The bags need to be protected from light, in my experience they bags are covered with a dark blue bag to achieve this protection, it also makes them instantly identifyable as TPN. You would have to be very quick and secretive to inject anything into a bag without someone asking what you were doing.

The TPN was stored in a locked fridge, who held the keys?

Baby L's blood sugars remained low for a prolonged period of time despite increasing infusion rates and concentrations of glucose. If the insulin was in the TPN, being delivered at a steady rate then how is this explained?

And let's not even get onto the speculation about 'sticky insulin' which seemed like a bizarre reach for the "expert witness".

In 2017 a month after police started investigating it was apparently the case that the stillbirth rate at coc was 10% higher than other maternity units ? Something was clearly very wrong there

Yep. And a lot of other incidents that aren't mentioned because they aren't linked to the presence of LL.

OK “babies not expected to die” then.

Three babies had blood results suggestive of exogenous insulin. Only the two LL was on duty for were part of the court case. Why was the third case not suspicious?

Apart from anything else - if exogenous insulin had in fact been administered, the 3rd case may be a key indication it was someone other than LL.

It makes me very uncomfortable- what I’ve just read points to the hospital being made aware of the investigation flagging up these high rates of stillbirth and neonatal death in the Feb the hospital doing their own internal investigation and then in the may going to the police with concerns ?

Apparently there were 24 recommendations for improvements the hospital needed to make. I find it really a huge coincidence they had high stillbirth rates at the same time

There was indeed a spike in stillbirths at the same time.

Quite! No matter which way you slice it the fact that they chose to overlook that third case is very concerning.

I appreciate I am very late to the party, but is there 100% proof that she did it? Don't think I am saying she is innocent in any of this, I am sure the court of justice knows their stuff, bit there just seems to be alot of speculation, some of which has alot of weight and likelihood.
Sorry if I've not read it all, I've got adhd and can't keep up xxx

I agree

No, there isn’t. If there was I don’t think any of us would still be talking about it. There are actually a lot of reasons to doubt her guilt, or to at least feel that the conviction is unsafe. It’s by no means a cut and dried case. There is a New Yorker article upthread that is geo blocked in the uk because of the upcoming trial, but the archive link upthread should work for you if you’re in the uk.

I’ve just been reading up on it I hadn’t been aware of this and it’s made me incredibly uncomfortable. What happened to these poor babies is heartbreaking and awful. Something seems very off though with everything at that maternity unit 😔

I think the jury decided correctly on the evidence the first time. There seemed to me to be quite a lot of evidence. However none of us were on the jury so we cannot of course know.

Yes, it is very unsettling in general.

By 2022 things had not improved much and the CQC rated maternity services as “inadequate”. The trust was served with a warning notice that significant improvements were required.

Inspectors noted that in a period of 6 months in 2021: 5 patients experienced a major haemorrhage, each lost more than 2 litres of blood and required an unplanned hysterectomy.

Perinatal mortality peaked in June-August 2020, which had at least improved marginally by 2022.

However inspectors noted there were not enough maternity staff and in the year prior to the inspection - the service was closed for a total of 144 hours. 33 women had to be diverted to other maternity units for some or all of their care.

Inspectors made the general finding that staff morale at the Countess of Chester Hospital Trust was the lowest nationally, waiting times had soared as more patients were referred, and lessons were not properly learned when serious incidents took place.

I note there’s been another inspection since then, still rating “requires improvement” across the board.

@Kittybythelighthouse thankyou xxx

I absolutely agree with this. I hear this narrative all the time from my large and conservative US family. They imagine we have 'socialist' medicine and will do everything to run it down.

And there was one jury member who was convinced she was guilty regardless. So possibly swayed by other jurors’ opinions.

I’m Canadian and lived there for 28 years before coming to England.

The anti socialised medicine lobby is MASSIVE and well funded. It’s almost like indoctrination. To further that the media is always looking for that cause celebre to show exactly why it’s evil. Alfie Evans and Archie Battersbee were two recent examples seized upon by the American media. They never talk about the poor chap who was successfully treated for cancer without going bankrupt.

I don’t think the NYer article is principally about medicine though - it’s really about justice - potential miscarriage of.

It is about the principle of socialised medicine.

The NHS is like a religion it opines. But the big bad NHS has engaged a cover-up to hang this young, beautiful nurse out to dry to save its reputation. Basically, the mythical like status of the NHS can never be questioned and must be protected at all costs. Yet another reason why it isn’t fit for purpose. Not only do we operate death panels but now we also make murderers of the staff.

It is all a richly woven tapestry and needs to be looked at as a whole. There is an agenda in America whether you wish to believe it or not. Why the altruism and interest in a foreign nurse, who went through a foreign justice system when there are MANY miscarriages of justice to fixate on it the USA.