They’ve been drip feeding bits and pieces. This latest drop only seems to underline that the COCH neonatal unit was poorly managed understaffed and badly in need of updating. There is nothing more here pointing towards Lucy Letby other than the fact that she worked a lot and often took on extra shifts, so she was there more than any other nurse (Steven Cross underlines this).
Again, Dr Brearey was the unit lead clinician, responsible for many of the poor decisions that led to babies of too high an acuity being taken into a dirty, overstretched, understaffed unit that had a poor skill mix of staff and often didn’t have basic lifesaving drugs and equipment on hand.
At the time of the alleged offences, particularly relating to babies M, Q and N, there were four recorded "high risks" on the NNU Risk Register relating to Pseudomonas, availability of medical staff, and availability of transfers.
Amanda Kelly (talking about the triplets): "We should not have received the triplets. Stephen Brearey did this".
Eirian Powell stated that there were "a couple of doctors that were quite prevalent in the review", and that a number of babies had congenital abnormalities. There was no concern about Lucy Letby's competence; in fact, quite the opposite.
Numerous mentions of witchhunts, targeting, scapegoating, and “looking for a single cause without any concrete evidence".
If the Inquiry sought to find ways to stop something like this from happening again, and they are intent on that ‘something’ being a serial killer nurse, they still have identified absolutely nothing unless they want to create a rule where any doctor can have any nurse suspended based purely on vibes without offering any evidence whatsoever.
They have unearthed an avalanche of evidence of hospital failings, poor care, and consultant failure though, particularly from Brearey.