New Lucy Letby details

[Mrsdoyler]

Did you see today in the news that LucyLetby originally failed her nursing training.

Reason: Lack of empathy

The rate of infusion was 10 x too much per hour. I don’t see what’s hard to understand about that if you’re a medical professional.

I think that's right it's the next handover that noticed the error.

I think we're saying the same thing though. Overdose in this situation can only arise from an error in the rate of infusion. If it were administered as bolus you could in theory give a double dose and cause an overdose that way, although it would be a very obvious and bizarre error which two people would have to sign off. But with continuous infusion it's simply setting the pump at the wrong rate that will cause the overdose.

You are right the error could arise by preparing the infusion incorrectly but we know that didn't happen. The next shift explicitly said they detected the pump set at the wrong rate.

It would also be v difficult to prepare incorrectly due to the fact morphine is controlled and as you say signed off by two nurses. In practice the only way to administer an overdose would be excessively fast infusion which would have the same effect.

It might have been a simple error. Which simply means she was not a good nurse. We ALL make mistakes but this kind of mistake is very unusual in my experience.

What is suspicious about saying you want to get your first death over with?? If you've never seen someone die before, but you know it's going to be part of your job, the waiting looms over you.

Same with your first cardiac arrest.
Same with your first night shift.
Same with your first day in a new job.

There is nothing weird about wanting to get that wait out of the way.

People who come out with "that was suspicious" clearly have no idea about working in a hospital/with patients/as a nurse.

Sadly I've seen infusion rates set incorrectly many times, that's why it should always be 2 nurses checking at each stage and an hourly infusion chart kept, but let's be honest, 2 nurses don't always check every stage and many are pretty bad at calculations, it's doubly unsafe and open to error when there's multiple lines, drips, pumps and infusions and this baby may have had several going at the same time, it doesn't mean someone is not a good nurse overall. Not excusing anyone but mistakes do happen, if datix are done then each hospital would know how many drug errors are made each year.,

It might have been a simple error. Which simply means she was not a good nurse. We ALL make mistakes but this kind of mistake is very unusual in my experience.

It means the senior nurse who was also responsible was not very good - it’s an understandable error in a rookie, less excusable in an more experienced practitioner.

"But the ultimate decision not to call Dr Hall as a witness came from Letby herself – a point that Dr Hall acknowledges."

I think this is perhaps the key to why the defence was so poor.

LL seems to have quite black and white thinking. I have thought from the start that there are signs of autism in the way she is described (very similar to a friend of mine who is lovely but somewhat quirky, and has a tendency of saying odd things under stress - she is autistic but wasn't diagnosed until 30s).

If LL firmly believed that sewage on the ward was what was causing the deaths she might well refuse other expert testimony that didn't agree with this view.

All her team had to do was find an expert to contradict what Evan’s was saying

Myers is still working for her so she does have faith in him

The police probably didn’t have the budget to pay for a statistics expert and a medical one - maybe they thought Medical expert was the way to go and perhaps they made inferences from what she said in her original feedback to them

The prosecution wanted to make the case that she was guilty, someone coming along to disprove that wouldn't have been in their interests.

They, however, maybe should have consulted with a statistician before DE came along with his "Babies don't just die." line of thought..

The police contacted Professor Jane Hutton, medical statistician, but the prosecution dispensed with her services.

Jane Hutton said:

"I am of the opinion that the conviction is not safe because of the number of statistical problems I've seen and because other specialists from other areas have voiced similar concerns from the basis of their own professions," she told Sky News.

The consensus from those who have been privy to the whole picture is:

Those that have been privy to the full remit of evidence, that includes the families, the jurors and the judges in the Court of Appeal, have all maintained her guilt.
"Anything outside of that, those that haven't seen or read or heard the entirety of the evidence, it's merely speculation."

I don’t get why seeing all the evidence is relevant? It would be normal for an expert witness to only see the evidence that pertains to their field of expertise, especially in a trial of this length.

If a leading statistician finds the statistical evidence meaningless to the point it should be inadmissible in court, that is all she needs to weigh in on. She doesn’t need to see the medical evidence because it wouldn’t mean anything to her anyway.

A professional statistician who has only seen the statistical evidence is absolutely going to be better placed to evaluate that evidence than a juror with no specialist knowledge who has seen all the evidence.

Also better placed than the families, who understandably have a huge weight of emotional bias attached to the cases, and better too than a judge, who has his or her own field of expertise.

“Who has seen all the evidence” does not matter when we are talking about highly specialised areas of evidence.

It’s not the full remit of evidence or the whole picture if they heard no expert witness evidence from a professional statistician at trial! The statistical evidence was missing.

I think Dr Hall dealt with this. He was there apart from a couple of half days when he read the transcripts afterwards. He saw the medical evidence. He says she didn’t get a fair trial.
If it wasn’t a fair trial then people who were there are quite likely to have got the wrong idea.
I also think that whoever writes the triedbystats website, who diligently went through the transcripts and identified the fact that the evidence that Baby C was murdered came from the day before Lucy Letby came on duty deserves praise for diligence and producing hard facts rather than speculation.
The same is true of others raising legitimate concerns about other aspects of the evidence such as how much insulin would actually be required, the feasibility of murder by air down the nasogastric tube or the diagnosis of air embolism.

@OrangeGreens

Actually she did request to see further information so that she could produce an accurate report - and without that information she simply cannot know what her conclusion would be!!!

Letby herself had offers from statists offering to give evidence on her behalf which she did not take up

Also if you don’t see why looking at all of the evidence is important then you should step away

It was the CPS who instructed the police not to consult a statistician after the police had initially engaged her services, which seems even more sinister

That’s what I recalled but when I checked the info it said the “prosecution” which may simply have been poor reporting.

The CPS makes more sense as the prosecution have no jurisdiction over the police.

@GossIsAGit

can you show where it has been stated that Letby was not on shift when baby C died?

you are putting misinformation out there

she was supposed to be nowhere near that baby as she had been moved down into nursery 3 or 4 yet still she went in and the Nurse in charge was really annoyed about it and told Eirian Powell about it. Not only that she was interfering in the bereavement process with the parents and she should not have been anywhere near.

Her own babies actually needed attention during this time!

Was the baby actually given any of the infusion or did the handover nurse notice the rate before it was given. Gone are the days when you can blame the senior nurse, that's why we have strict policies and double checking, did the senior nurse also have to undertake extra training. Ime new nurses are better at calculations but that's a very general statement.

It was noticed before the baby was given anything afair.

The murder charge and conviction were based on an x-ray from the day before Letby came on shift.
https://x.com/triedbystats/status/1840865071469379848

I think the source of confusion in the media is the sentence in this email:

”We have had a further meeting this afternoon where we have informed the prosecutors that we were looking at the validity of statistical evidence again in the case [ ] The prosecutor does not agree with our line of inquiry and has instructed us not to pursue this avenue, any further, at present.”

That clearly refers to the CPS but it was also reported in the media as referring to the prosecution.

I haven’t heard from anywhere else that the choice not to have the evidence reviewed by a statistician was a money saving one but if that was the case then it will likely turn out to be one of the worst false economies in the history of trials. And would say something very worrying about the low regard statistics is held in by the legal profession.

Oh right, bad biased reporting again