Culpability of consultants in Letby case

[curaçao]

Why did any of the 7 consultants who suspected Letby nit go to the police themselves? If you had strong suspicions that someone had committed murders, wouldn't you feel you had a strong moral duty to go to the police? OK maybe it was protocol to report it to managers, but surely they had a moral duty to whistleblow and report their suspicions to the police
But they are trying very hard to deflect blame onto managers who wouldn't even have known Letby nor understood the medical stuff

Add incompetence of HMRC and sexism in the fire service. Our public sector is in a bad way, and, no, it's not all about lack of money - that's just the excuse constantly trotted out to excuse poor management.

It’s only a couple of weeks since the Williamson look back report was in the local news, at Salford, not far away found 30 people harmed. GMC had looked at the same cases and cleared the consultant. He was sacked for a non medical matter, never struck off. Was all going on for years amid a ‘toxic culture according to reports. What the heck is happening?
Something wildly wrong with our systems.

@curaçao Do you have some particular expertise or experience in the relevant field that makes you think this could have gone a different way? In particular, if the experience of the consultants is that, going over the managers' heads would have resulted in their own investigation/suspension, do you think it was a better decision for them to stay in situ and keep an eye on Letby as much as feasibly possible - rather than new consultants coming in with no background knowledge of the history of suspicions against her, and possibly being "company men", willing to turn a blind eye?

The other point in the article was that letby was supposed to be supervised. That didn't happen because of short staff.

I wonder if that background of short staffing also helped descions, again I've seen manoeuvres made around that.

We will see in time if the doctors take legal action because their complaints were not treated as protected whistleblowing disclosures. This has to be one of the most obvious examples of failures under that legislation that I’ve seen. The Sunday Times reports a non-executive director called up management after a Board meeting at which a heavily biased view was presented that the doctors were harassing LL and that INED insisted on further investigation which was ignored. Was that the whistleblowing non-exec? Only an inquiry will get to the bottom of it.

In terms of governance, a major problem in any organisation is the “where to go next” route. Very few approach the Board members directly and in this case, doctors were not invited to attend the Board postings. They were actually told to stop discussing it by management.

The Sunday Times also reported that an investigation was underway in the unit before the police were called in. That was possibly a leak from within to stop LL returning to a ward. We will never know the source.

Nurses were deeply divided. Most sided with LL too and thought her victimised.

Now imagine if the doctors had just left and gone into private practice, to another trust or abroad - how many more babies would have been killed? LL was very close to returning with a promotion. It’s unthinkable. Instead of running away, they did what endless social workers and teachers who make protected disclosures and are ignored do - they stay to try to protect the children.

They are the blameless ones in all this and risked everything.

I agree with this. I've not heard reports of her colleagues believing it was being done intentionally/murder. Just that they noticed a pattern and raised it as a concern with management. If I'm incorrect and her colleagues witnessed her injecting air into the babies then yes they should have gone straight to the police.

Came on here to post more or less this - well said.

OP, imagine you’re a hospital manager.

If seven consultants - highly experienced - came together with concerns about a nursing colleague and a correlation to increased deaths, what would you do?

Would you investigate properly or threaten the careers of the seven consultants to cover the fact that you yourself are incompetent and to be blunt, can’t be fucked to do your job properly?

Those seven consultants did the right thing. And carried on trying to do the right thing despite the gaslighting and hands tied behind their backs.

So just stop. You’re barking up the wrong tree and it’s actually just cruel.

Now imagine if the doctors had just left and gone into private practice, to another trust or abroad - how many more babies would have been killed? LL was very close to returning with a promotion. It’s unthinkable. Instead of running away, they did what endless social workers and teachers who make protected disclosures and are ignored do - they stay to try to protect the children

They are the blameless ones in all this and risked everything

This, a hundred times over

Im sure your friend doesn't need me to tell her this but now is the perfect time to anonymously take her concerns to the media

The journo from the Mail who has been covering this case for example

YABU.

They tried, next step is to whistleblow and people lose their jobs/careers for doing that. Even though they should be protected.

Plus they were threatened with being reported to the GMC for bullying. GMC investigations take months/years. Foreign trained Drs are scrutinised more closely than their peers. The suicide rate of those going through GMC investigations is high.

^this. And as for “if I thought someone was killing babies” if I had solid evidence is one thing but I wouldn’t risk my entire livelihood on a concern. That’s why management is at fault - they were in a position to investigate properly (actually better placed than Police) and they failed.

Op is there actual facts you personally know or are you going by tabloids?

I was wondering why it took so long to get the police involved? fear of losing jobs?

Actually management should be culpable though.

It's like going round in bloody circles.

Don't people actually read other posts? Does it go in?

There js only one person to blame and that is the person who killed the kids.

🙈

There was no evidence of a crime, just a trend observed. They got other people to review and badgered management. The consultant only found the insulin anomaly by spending his free time reviewing old cases - and he probably has a lot less free time than you do

some did suspect her of a crime hence why they called the police.

There have been some horrible and stupid threads on this subject but this one has to be the vilest

Feeling uncomfortable with this because he had started to notice the coincidence between the unexplained deaths, serious collapses and the presence of Lucy Letby, Dr Jayaram decided to check on where Lucy Letby was and how child K was.
"She did not have her hands inside the incubator, but Dr Jayaram could see from the monitor on the wall that child K’s oxygen saturation level was falling dangerously low, to somewhere in the 80s."

"But the alarm was not sounding as it should have been and Lucy Letby had not called for help, despite child K’s oxygen levels falling."

This doc defo suspected

@daliesque Of course Lucy Letby is the responsible. But I think the fact senior staff ignored other staff & so further babies does is incomprehensible & that culture needs to change.

Oh, give it a rest

I think we need to look at the culture where there is a fear of reporting wrongdoing and threats of regulatory and other consequences to silence people. Highly intelligent, highly qualified, articulate, assured, knowledgeable doctors being silenced. People who are more than able to stand their ground. What in the culture has gone wrong that they can’t speak freely? I don’t blame them at all.

Yes if they thought she was murdering them then you’d expect them to go to the police. But I’m not sure they did at the start, more that it was malpractice

@daliesque you are saying the trust management did nothing wrong?

Don't underestimate how difficult it is to overcome a management who are determined to believe that the problem lies with the whistleblowers.

Yes, whistleblowers are always frozen out.

Is it normal for a nurse in a high dependency unit to have the opportunity to force a metal instrument down a baby’s throat? Aren’t there other people around all the time?

Are you an NHS manager?

I was listening to a podcast about the case. One of the horrifically died after having a metal instrument forced down his throat causing extensive bleeding. Yet his parents were advised against a post mortem ? Why ? Who on earth would advise that when it was an unexpected death ? So may questions that need to be properly answered. If a PM had been done then surely it would have been conclusive that something was very amiss. I just don't understand how on earth all these deaths could have happened and not stopped sooner.

There is a culture of covering up, look at all the maternity scandals & avoidable deaths.