Lucy Letby

[kkloo]

New thread as the last one has filled up.

I still find it a stretch to suggest a load of consultants all came up with this idea with no critical awareness or self - awareness st all. They had a lot of experience between them. I think it's perfectly plausible that they got a sense things werent right.

But the evidence is there that they didn't have critical or self awareness because they were missing signs that the babies were deteriorating, they seemed to be missing just how substandard the care actually was etc, the other option is that they were all in fact in cahoots and decided to frame an innocent nurse but I don't believe that that is the case, so I believe the evidence points to the former.

Jeremy Hunt said that this is common, that the easiest thing is to take the rotten apple approach and find the rotten apple rather than delve into the other issues.

I still find it a stretch to suggest a load of consultants all came up with this idea

Not independently: one had the idea and convinced the others.

But re: "find it a stretch": more of a stretch than a nurse deciding to murder babies for no clear reason? And inventing unheard-of murder methods for that? And leaving no clear-cut evidence in any one of many murder attempts? And predicting that, after she's off-shift, a line will tissue and another nurse will pick a specific stock bag to use?

Innocent explanations have to be much more unlikely than all that (and more), to be confidently ruled out.

Well we know something about these consultants don’t we. We know that despite the fact that they were taking more and higher acuity babies due to regional pressure on the system they were doing two rounds a week instead of the two a day minimum they should have been doing. We know that one of them was trying really hard to be a TV star. We’ve seen email evidence of their collusion to frame their allegations in a way that would get the police interested, and their somewhat ill mannered interactions with the hospital management. We know that one of them lied on the stand. Whilst I don’t believe they deliberately banded together to look for a nurse to pin their failures on, I think we can see arrogance and a lack of self reflection.

Ok, let's say you are correct. That is then a very frightenjng idea. If it exists there, in that uniit, then it must exist elsewhere too.
.....which means when any of us goes into hospital, we cannot rely on the people treating us to be behaving independently snd using g their critical faculties. That is scary.

Yep!

This is true, thank goodness. But time goes in one direction, and 10 years ago the god complex was stronger than it is today.

I’ve not told this story before, but I have a healthcare professional relative who, just over 10 years ago developed spontaneous hypoglycaemia. The endocrinologist she saw assumed that, as she had access to insulin at work, she was injecting herself for attention. It’s a long story, but he insisted that, because the symptoms were not constant, it could not be natural. Eventually she was referred to a different hospital. Her new consultant disagreed completely and was astonished at the (incorrect) diagnostic pathway she had been on. He diagnosed an insulinoma and she had curative surgery.

So, forgive me for being sceptical that consultants follow evidence-based practice. And also that endocrinologists know more than insulin testing experts than insulin testing experts.

Well, it’s not all bad. My recent experiences with elderly relatives have been astonishingly good despite clearly crumbling infrastructure.

But it’s far from good and far from safe. This much is evident from the myriad reports into healthcare scandals and catastrophes.

It does exist elsewhere too, but obviously some places will be better than others and some will be the worst.

Have you seen the recent Ockenden Maternity Review into Nottingham university hospital NHS trust?

https://archive.ph/h7ySs

Loads of people here will have had first hand experience of either they or their loved ones going into hospital and the people responsible for looking after them failing to use their critical faculties. I could describe several very concerning examples from my husband’s gall bladder surgery and my daughter’s pregnancy and delivery and grandson’s stay in NICU last year. It is frightening. We’ve all seen the maternity scandals and the fact that the compensation bill for harm to mothers and babies exceeds the entire maternity budget. I don’t think there’s any “let’s say you’re correct” about it.

Yeah, I think the best way to put it is that, as the multiple enquiries are showing, our structures haven't prevented various disaster units and hospitals from happening, repeatedly. Certainly doesn't mean all the NHS is like that, and I've had some great experiences myself (as well as some less so). But it does mean that yes, we all have to get used to some very frightening ideas about what we've failed to stop in the NHS.

@PinkTonic We’ve all seen the maternity scandals and the fact that the compensation bill for harm to mothers and babies exceeds the entire maternity budget.

Yes and compensation claims are really just the tip of the iceberg because they represent cases that were serious and pursued legally. There would be many multiples more of cases where there are near misses, mistakes, poor judgement etc but mother and baby are lucky to escape serious consequences.

Well, on the news, but that's all I know.

http://www.ockendenmaternityreview.org.uk/

This is the website with the full report. The Executive Summary is 87 numbered paragraphs summarising the full report. This is quicker to read than the full report is at the beginning (after the letter to the Secretary of State, Why the report so important and acknowledgments), and it gives all the important details.

Thanks

I must admit I can think lots of positive reasons she may have looked patirnts/families up on FB. I can't really think of a negative reason? I get it may seem intrusive to families who found out but from what I understand she searched for them, she didn't 'like' photos or comment etc.

What people have claimed is that she looked the parents up to enjoy their grief. But she made thousands of Facebook searches, so it seems more likely that she looked the parents of indictment babies up for similar reasons

She didn’t look up the families of all the babies. Surely if this is evidence of intent to murder she would have looked them all up?

If.she did it for sinister reasons, she might have had a fixation with some families more than others.

Or she might just have been bored and nosey. She made over 2000 searches for people; only 30-odd were for families of the babies, which indicates she really wasn't all that interested in the families.

Bullies always call the people they bully 'kind' 😩😩😩

They hated her and she got the blame for their actions - thats how the world works

That, imo, is the long and short of it

Poor thing, but mostly, poor parents getting fobbed off by that bunch of evil sickos

You'd have thought that out of all the suspicious events, at least one would have included something along the lines of "I saw Lucy Letby doing (something - seemed to be part of routine care) but thought nothing of it, but then the baby crashed seconds later". Other than dodgy Ravi and baby K, given the number of people around during all these incidents, how come nobody noticed a thing? Even in hindsight?

They did. This mum said this is exactly what happened-

If you mean staff, well she had ample time to do something the minute they left or their backs were turned. The weirdest thing about the reaction to this case is people seem to expect her to have harmed babies right in front of people

Lucy Letby wasn't charged with that case

The mother didn't see her doing anything - she was just at her child's cotside when she came downstairs. ICU babies aren't supposed to be left alone.

So the mum is saying she saw Lucy Letby at work, where she was supposed to be. No procedures. She saw a nurse looking blank. That's all she says, isn't it?

The weirdest thing about the reaction to this case is people seem to expect her to have harmed babies right in front of people

No the really weird thing is that you think that she could have done those things, repeatedly, in a busy NNU, leaving no trace, and that literally no other member of the staff she worked alongside ever saw anything remotely suspicious. The closest you’ve got is Ravi Jayaram and that turned out to be a lie.

I think 9 of the 31 searches of the families were for babies E and Fs parents so they were definitely searched for the most, the rest seems to be searched for between 1-3 times, that to me just doesn't seem like a pattern of a fixated serial killer, she was making roughly 250 searches a month for all sorts of people but only very occasionally looked for the babies parents? It just doesn't really add up to me like she's searching for someone from salsa to have a little nose and then goes snooping on someone elses page and then decides oh I'll get a dopamine fix now from searching for one of my victims?

We don't know why she looked up the family of babies E and F the most, Their mother said that Lucy Letby was very attentive of her, more than the other nurses were, and that whenever she used to see her she'd hug her and that she was just as upset as she was, very emotional and always looked like she was on the verge of tears around her so if she's innocent then looking at it from that perspective maybe Letby was particularly emotionally affected by babies E and F, or felt particularly close to the mum so that family popped into her thoughts more.