Hate to be a stickler, but is there actual evidence of these 'nurses leaving in droves' over this matter?
Afterall there is a culture of whistle coverup in the NHS as there is in any large public institution, so Jayaram thinks he's being clever stating the obvious because he needs no evidence to assert that, but I am interested in knowing if the working environment and culture of senior doctors passing the buck to nurses has in fact made nurses uneasy about being scapegoated.
For one thing, applied nursing practice in hospitals can be different to that of what doctors do, yet no senior nurses were provided as expert witnesses in the trial, to go over some of those points where it was alleged Lucy was derelict in her care such as standing over the baby 'doing nothing'. Was she in fact doing something that simply looked like nothing to a Doctor? It would have been good to have a picture of how far Lucy's practice deviated from the standard practice of neonatal nursing at key points where she was being accused of being deliberately neglectful/remiss/ making mistakes. Why did the NMC not request, ask about, challenge this not being done?
Do nurses need more protection? My understanding is that doctors can be somewhat caught up in their seniority and nurses are often first in the firing line for mistakes. Nursing is unfairly seen as an inferior profession to being a GP or doctor. In regards to this trial the NMC seems to have done no separate review, or asked any questions about the evidence and not offered or provided an expert neonatal nurse to the inquiry. Yet the prosecution had doctors essentially upholding the testimony of doctors. Some of those doctors are still coming out with authoritative seeming statements, without any pushback, that further serves to support this dysfunctional notion about doctor superiority over nursing. Does the NMC support this dysfunctional culture wherein nurses can be more easily scapegoated? To a layperson it appears they do.
The NMC says their mission is to protect the public, but don't they also have a duty to uphold the profession? If professional nursing practice is possibly being misunderstood and mischaracterised, especially publicly, isn't it their duty to dispell any such misunderstandings?
Where do nursing trusts come in? Who protects nurses in trial situations?
I confess I don't understand how any of this works, just speculating. But I do think that sitting quietly and allowing this nurse to be thrown under the bus like this with little challenge, and not asking questions of the evidence, or the testimony of the expert witnesses serves to further imprint in the minds of the general public the notion that nurses should be challenged, are more fallible, less reliable, less knowledgeable, less trustworthy and less well trained than doctors. And the nursing trusts have aided that notion to the detriment of their own profession by sitting quietly and asking no questions during the most high profile trial of a nurse in possibly history.
If I were a nurse (especially, sadly a female and/or a pretty one) starting my nursing career with a particularly vulnerable patient cohort, I think I'd be be feeling concerned about whether I'd be seen as competent and worried about challenging authority or bad practice by seniors. Is Jayaram concerned about those voices being stifled? A stifling he has directly contributed to with his assertions about Letby's alleged malpractice 'walking into a room and seeing her doing nothing?' but himself doing nothing about that is by-the-by.