Lucy Letby: have you changed your mind - thread 3

[Typicalwave]

New thread for those following or wishing to comment - originally started by @kittybythelighthouse.

She said it was far from the worst spike, as far as I recall

Defining the worst is slippery and depends on more stats for background around acuity, gestation, overspill between hospital, demographic characteristics etc.

This is the sort of work Jane Hutton explained was needed, before Chester Police took her off the case. She's done it since, free of charge, for the defence.

Yes. The unit was in line with the average before she started working there. Somewhere has to take higher needs babies. Do you actually care that babies died because she got left on the unit for months because people like you refuse to see she was guilty?

Units without any neonatologists shouldn't take the highest needs babies though. They were out of their depth. Liverpool Women's Hospital and Arrowe Park were the two hospitals that were meant to take the highest needs babies - never Chester.

The NICU suite in the CoCH was not fit for purpose regarding the upgrade to the highest level of care. Consultants only going on the suite 3 times A WEEK is not par excellence and very much below it.

Do you have a source for that.

@Kittybythelighthouse I'll have to look into your claim about Chester not having the worst spike, it'd be hard to imagine more deaths happening at another hospital...

I haven’t read through all the threads, so forgive me if this has already come up, but the latest erroneous statistics about the breathing tubes at Liverpool Women’s Hospital are appalling.

BBC Panorama been roasted over repeating them and had to publish a correction and edit the programme post-broadcast.

In a case where stats have already been misrepresented and misunderstood (Year 5 level maths errors with rota chart) really shocking.

You do not have within any private hospital in the UK a level 3 NICU suite. It's all NHS funded.

Not sure if anyone has already posted this in response to your concerns, @Firefly1987 .

It shows how Chester's spike can be explained by the unit taking on more of the most vulnerable children.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/06/spike-in-deaths-at-letby-hospital-could-be-explained/

This may have happened for a few reasons - maternity services overwhelmed or reorganized in North Wales and Liverpool; consultants trying to minimize care for children born there elsewhere for financial reasons, as happened with baby G; general failure to recognize limitations. But it certainly happened, as data presented since at Thirlwall show, starting May 2015.

I think @Firefly1987 should look into any spikes on the rise of baby deaths in Ibiza during the holiday.

I think you and 1987 are referring to different measurements so are talking at cross purposes.

I may be wrong, but I think @firefly1987is referencing the raw numbers of neonatal deaths on a unit and comparing it to other units and who had the most deaths in 2015 and you are referring to deaths per thousand (adjusted to get rid of noise and to allow for differences in numerous variables across units) and then looking at those numbers for each unit in 2014 and then 2015 and then presenting the final number for each unit as 2015/2014 to give a ratio? Which then shows which unit had the largest increase in 2015?

Good summation @placemats! There are a few posters on here who do not seem to understand the difference between fact and opinion. Its actually a good microcosm of what the consultants and the police seem to have done.

Its human nature to want to blame someone when something terrible happens and babies dying is about as bad as it gets. Its a lot easier to blame a person to blame a system or systems.

Wait what? So potential serial killer nurses should just be left to get on with it? Lucy Letby should be allowed out around children? Back on a neonatal unit? And this on MUMsnet! You'd risk it? All because a murdering nurse doesn't fit your definition of what you think a serial killer is?

Can you just coear up for me whay you mean by ‘death rate’? Raw data? As in how many deaths occurred on the unit - or something else?

@Typicalwave it's per 1000 deaths I believe-

They found the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust had a neonatal death rate of 1.91 for every 1,000 live births that year.
This was the highest out of the 43 trusts of a similar size it was compared with, which had an average of 1.27 neonatal deaths for every 1,000 live births.
There were also 5.42 extended perinatal deaths - deaths within four weeks - for every 1,000 births, including stillbirths. The average for similar sized maternity units was 4.73 deaths per 1,000 births.
The rate declined in 2016 but was still among the highest in the group.

Apologies that wasn't completely correct.
But this is the timeline of charges before and after the holiday

Child M (attempted murder, 9/4/16)
Child N (Attempted murder 3/6/16 and 15/6/16 and 15/6/16)
Ibiza holiday
Child O (Murder 23/6/16)

My main point still stands, a week with nothing happening doesn't mean anything, there was plenty of weeks and even months when LL was there and nothing happened.

Of course you're going to ignore the gaps and look at that and think aha so she attacked directly before and after her holiday but Child N is the one she's accused of trying to kill 5 minutes into her shift (found guilty of that one on the 3rd of June) No verdicts were reached for the other 2 charges, probably because they were trying to make out LL caused the injury to the babies throat even though the doctor did 7 failed intubation attempts and had to get someone out from another hospital to do it.

I think you'll find that most people who post on Mumsnet, yourself and a few others being excluded, tend towards the rational and logical approach when making decisions.

You know fine well that the scenario you paint above is never going to happen.

Although babies and children are allowed in prison to see prisoners; some even stay there with their mum.

I don't think they should be 'left to get on with it'. I'm not talking about people keeping their jobs or not if there are suspicions of harm etc, I am specifically referring to the evidence I would expect to see if someone is to be sent to prison.

I've told you several times now that I am a firm believer in Blackstones ratio that it is better that 10 guilty go free rather than 1 innocent be locked up.

Many people hold that belief, but you are constantly surprised when other people aren't convinced by the evidence and expect to see stronger evidence if someone is going to be locked up for the rest of their life.

Were there actually no deaths?

Or there were deaths but they weren't looked in to as LL wasn't there?

One random cluster in the whole of the uk?

Yes.

According to statisticians one random cluster is expected in the whole of the UK every year. And the CoCH increase was not enough to be considered an outlier. Statistically.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/university-of-cambridge-bristol-nhs-gps-blackpool-b2680186.html

The MBRRACE report that year flagged 20 other units that year. Here’s the whole report if you want to read it:

https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/assets/downloads/mbrrace-uk/reports/MBRRACE-UK-PMS-Report-2015%20FINAL%20FULL%20REPORT.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

But here’s the list of trusts for you

• NHS Ayrshire & Arran
• Belfast Health and Social Care Trust
• Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust
• Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust
• City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust
• Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust
• Derby Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
• Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust
• Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• Northern Health and Social Care Trust
• Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust
• Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust
• Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust
• Western Health and Social Care Trust
• Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust
• Wye Valley NHS Trust
• York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation

I don't know if that information has been made public.

Thank you - will find it.

Unless it becomes in the publics interest I doubt that it will.

But at the risk of repeating what everybody should know.
There were others deaths at this hospital that were never looked in to because LL wasn't there.

Maybe. I’ll have to find Firefly’s comment again to check. I used MBRRACE data. MBRRACE reports neonatal deaths per 1,000 live births (≥24 weeks), often grouped by trust size (Sherwood Forest and Countess of Chester are in the 2,000-3,999 births per year category) Their quoted figures are already risk-adjusted for factors like gestational age etc so that like with like are compared across units.

As far as I’m aware MBRRACE don’t publish raw counts per trust without adjusting for e.g neonatal deaths per 1000 births ≥24 weeks etc. Either way a spike is only meaningful relative to the trust size and deaths per 1000 births etc which is why MBRRACE publish their data in this way. A raw number of deaths is meaningless without the denominator (births) and adjustment. You probably already know that but just fyi for anyone else who doesn’t.

It’s here 🙂 https://archive.ph/S13QQ

Firefly, I am getting weary of being told I’m making “claims” when I literally posted the info three times on this thread already in replies to you!

Here it is yet again. I even removed the Telegraph paywall. https://archive.ph/S13QQ

The biggest blue spike is Sherwood Forest, not COCH.