Lucy Letby in the news

[Viviennemary]

I've just been watching the BBC news and apparently some experts have been questioning the validity of Lucy Letbys conviction. I must say when I read the details of the trial she did sound 100% guilty. But it would be a tragedy if she is innocent Personally I don't think she is but who knows. Somebody on the news said the only person who knows is Lucy Letby.

@Catpuss66 presumably the doctors were not on the unit most of the time, they were being called in AFTER a baby had collapsed, and they realised Lucy was always there when they were being called in.

Not sure if this has been said already as haven't finished reading the thread, but the hospital stopped taking in babies that were at high risk of dying afterwards, so there is a reason death rates dropped.

@PepaWepa most of the babies in the case were not at high risk of dying, that's why the collapses were so unexpected. Three healthy triplets and the weakest one survives once he was moved away from LL, funny that.

It is possibly quite difficult to say the deaths were unexpected when the doctors were doing ward rounds twice a week, it was hardly optimal care. Baby C (iirc) was reportedly not seen for 3 days, how can there be any certainty that the baby was doing absolutely fine?

If it wasn't such a shambles a lot of the deaths could possibly have been prevented.

From what I read yesterday initially they were just concerned with the discolouration at time of collapse, nothing to do with Lucy that came later. On the Thirwall inquiry website there is loads of documents to view one of them is testimony of one of the doctors.

None of the triplets were healthy.
there was only 1 doctor and 1 nurse at the birth. Which is extremely understaffed. They shouldn’t have even been delivering them.

For Lucy Letby (LL) to have murdered the children all of these things have to be true:

1. LL switched murder techniques and researched them all having left no trace of having done such research;
2. literally all of the initial post mortem causes of death (natural causes or unexplained) missed the murders;
3. LL has the most normal psychological profile of any serial killer ever known – no known background of cruelty to animals, antisocial tendencies, anything;
4. LL’s care of patients aroused zero suspicion through her years of training and practice, the first suspicion arose due to her presence in and around a few deaths or near-deaths, nothing anyone had seen in her actual care of patients;
5. LL committed the murders despite none of her colleagues directly observing her doing so;
6. LL faked her expressions of sadness at the babies’ deaths to families and colleagues.

From a comment on another site.

That's not what I've read. They were all very ill babies that died and the deaths were not unexpected, hence why no alarm bells were raised and they were passed off as natural at first.
The weakest one survived because they paid most attention to the weakest one to try to save it.

I think the triplets were a good weight and were expected to survive.
Their unexpected deaths looked to people who already suspected Lucy Letby like confirmation of her guilt. Suboptimal care is still a much more likely explanation.

Points one to three are compelling, particularly the research point, given her extensive online activity.

Four to six are less significant and could easily occur alongside murder.

In any case it’s only the medical evidence that actually matters, and it does not seem to support a guilty verdict without reasonable doubt.

I’d like to agree in principle that it’s the medical evidence that counts, but if point five weren’t true (Nobody saw her do anything) then the medical evidence wouldn’t need to be so clear.
That’s what I’d hope.

I’ve regularly heard it said that the COCH would rather blame these deaths and near deaths on a single individual with evil intent rather than failings of staff practices and procedures and so decided to build a case against poor, unfortunate LL as the sacrificial lamb to save the unit’s reputation. How does that square with what is being revealed at the Thirwell Inquiry, in particular the revelation that senior management were extremely reluctant to call in the police for fear that the unit would be “covered in blue and white tape” and shut down?

The picture I had even before the inquiry is of a sort of groupthink growing amongst the consultants, who were trying to establish reasons for the sudden increase in deaths and saw Lucy Letby on duty against the first three or four.
I think Jayaram said that once you see it you can’t unsee it.
As the statisticians are telling us and the consultants actually discussed this at the time, the spike in deaths really isn’t that unusual given the law of small numbers.
Management’s reaction, given there was no evidence for Letby’s involvement in the deaths was perfectly rational.
I think management’s concern with image may not be above reproach, but it has no bearing on the likelihood that Letby committed the crimes if that’s what you’re suggesting. Is that what you’re suggesting?

Because it wasn’t a conscious, deliberate, evil conspiracy against Lucy Letby by a bunch of people who knew full well she was innocent, it’s people convincing themselves she was guilty through bad logic and confirmation bias. So the fact it has ended up drawing significantly more attention to the hospital isn’t the point - at some point they will have known that this will be the outcome but by this point they are morally committed to stopping a murderer (in their view).

It really baffles me how people think the babies that sadly died were strong and healthy. They were very tiny, very prem and very poorly. And as previously discussed, most shouldnt have really even been there as the neonatal department was not being run at the level it was equipped for.
The sewage problem alone would have caused a huge risk let alone the dangerous way that the hospital was run.
Sadly, there were also increases in stillbirths and miscarriages during the same time period which points very strongly to the whole unit being in chaos and badly run with over worked nurses, not enough doctors and a pretty toxic environment.

It’s a such a sad situation but not one that I believe LL is responsible for. There are too
many doubts - her convictions seem unsafe.

It really baffles me how people think the babies that sadly died were strong and healthy. They were very tiny, very prem and very poorly. And as previously discussed, most shouldnt have really even been there as the neonatal department was not being run at the level it was equipped for.

That's a bit of a misconception. As has been pointed out, most would still have qualified for the unit after it was downgraded because they were over 32 weeks or very close to it. Indeed, one was full term, and two were at 34 weeks - one of those having been transferred from another hospital in a stable condition. They were babies who were fully expected to survive, and indeed who would almost certainly have survived (given the unit's statistics) in the two years before Letby turned up.

One of the most striking moments in the most recent Channel 5 documentary was the Addenbrokes neonatologist and his absolute disgust that babies he thought should be being checked by a consultant three times a day were instead getting twice WEEKLY ward rounds.
As I understand it when they downgraded the Chester unit they also increased the staffing.
The insistence the babies were fine doesn’t have a leg to stand on when they were actually being neglected to this level. And it’s not just the lack of attention from doctors, but the fact that no matter how competent a recently trained nurse is for that level in her career, someone with thirty years under her belt is going to have seen more and know more. The absolute failure by hospital management to recognise the value of that expertise when cost cutting is shameful, and it’s no surprise it’s mostly women whose experience is being undervalued there.

Dr Shipman got away with many murders. Some sources say he could have killed as many as 300 people. The point is a lot of them were vulnerable health wise and that's why he got away with it for so long. Concerns were raised just like they were in the case of Lucy Letby. But they were dismissed.

The Thirlwall has simply confirmed quite how dire the care was. Quite how chaotic the unit. And how much in denial the consultants were. It has revealed they had literally no evidence whatsoever against LL simply basing their witch-hunt on their misunderstanding of stats.

How can consultants possibly expect to run or even know what’s going on in a supposed Level 2 unit (with some temporary Level 3) care on 2 ward rounds per week? The standard should be 2 ward rounds per day with 24 hour consultant cover.

Dr Hawdon was very clear in her report that 13 of 17 cases were due to suboptimal care, issues with clinical management and some babies may have survived with different medical treatment.

The management quite rightly kicked back on wild allegations for which there was never any shred of evidence. Equally those consultants, had they genuinely believed foul play from 2015 onwards, had a professional obligation to notify the coroner and the CDOP in every case and they did neither. They didn’t actually bother to put in proper incident reports or follow hospital’s own procedure on risk management. All this claim that management prevented them is a lie. Management couldn’t stop them doing their jobs.

I attach a very interesting insight from yesterday.

The concerns raised about Lucy Letby had no substance or validity. The consultants never claimed to have evidence against her.
The consultants were playing a double game by trying to drive out Lucy Letby with bullying and open slander. At the same time they failed to notify the coroner or the child death overview panel (which includes a senior police officer) that they had any suspicions or that deaths were unexpected.
There is no interpretation of their behaviour which doesn’t make at least some of them contemptible.

I didn’t see the latest C5 documentary but one of the most telling examples of this is Baby K.

Jayaram reported Baby K as stable. On transfer to Arrowe Park the 2 consultants described the baby as “extremely unwell” with undiagnosed severe lung disease, undiagnosed kidney failure, uncontrolled low blood pressure, uncontrolled blood glucose related to prematurity. The baby had suffered several failed intubation attempts at COCH including one witnessed by the AP consultant on transfer.

The Arrowe Park mortality review concluded that cause of death: severe respiratory distress and prematurity. They found that the baby had received suboptimal care at COCH and the extremely poor condition on arrival meant death was unavoidable.

No, I’m suggesting that the idea (which I have heard voiced on Mumsnet and elsewhere) that the COCH threw LL under the bus to cover up for their own failings doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on. I would have thought my meaning was clear from my post?

So it’s untrue that two of the 3 triplets in this case were thought to be doing so well that they were considering letting them go home the same day they mysteriously fell ill and died?

Thirwall has simply confirmed quite how dire the care was. Quite how chaotic the unit. And how much in denial the consultants were. It has revealed they had literally no evidence whatsoever against LL simply basing their witch-hunt on their misunderstanding of stats.

Well there was clearly enough evidence ultimately to support a three year police investigation and then an eight month trial, with many many more people involved than just the consultants...

I don't get why people can't seem to see that (allegedly) poor clinical governance and care in the unit are mutually exclusive with the potential for a a serial killer to operate in that environment. The two former conditions may well have gone some way to facilitating the latter.

If the spike in deaths really wasn’t that unusual then why were so many experienced health practitioners at the hospital so concerned about it?