I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised to find another member of the medical profession (After Harold Shipman) to be a serial killer. As we know form the police, education system and the church all professions attract those who are the polar opposite of what they are supposed to be.
You have to think there have must been more over the course of time who have gotten away with it.
A disturbing thought.
Last edited by: Robin O'Reliant on Fri 18 Aug 23 at 21:50
|
Every time I've heard about her conviction and her supposed unique acts I've kept shouting the name Bev Allit...
|
No mention of Munchhausens yet by anyone. I suppose more medical stuff will follow before sentence.
Allitt is 54 now and has been inside for 30 yrs. Currently in R
ampton. Wonder if Letby will end up there.
Ted
|
The Judge will be a busy bee over the weekend writing sentencing notes.
Guess that psychiatric etc reports were in place for trial; will be interesting to see whether any of that is mentioned at sentence.
|
>> You have to think there have must been more over the course of time who
>> have gotten away with it.
>>
>> A disturbing thought.
>>
I think there's been a couple of baby units with high mortality rates, that was put down to staff levels and lack of experience. But it's not impossible another child murderer may have been hiden in plain sight.
I wonder if Letbys motivation will ever be known? Some sort of weird power kick?
|
|
I watched the show about the trial on tv last night, the CEO (from 2018-22) was interviewed. She spoke in such a passive voice as though she was a bystander in the whole thing and had no real authority. Very odd.
|
I am not clear who has, or should have had, the real authority in this.
The CEO I assume ultimately carries responsibility but would be reliant on other board members which include a Medical Director and Director of Nursing both of whom would be experienced senior medical professionals.
The enquiry will (I hope) clarify this and also what (if any) discussions were held at board or senior level.
Pending this I would expect all potentially involved to be getting into blame mode with heads well below the parapet to mix a couple of metaphors.
|
It's absolutely terrible that she has done this, but by the calibration of most of us anyone would need to have something very wrong with them to have done it. She is, in the everyday sense, insane whether or not the legal definition is met.
No such excuse can be made for managers and a culture that told 7 consultants asking for an investigation to keep quiet and stop sending emails.
Letby was in effect caught, and they ignored and suppressed it. Those managers should also be answerable to a criminal court, as should the trust executives who allowed them to think that was what they should be doing.
It didn't stop there. When Letby found out such concerns being expressed, she raised a grievance, which was upheld, and the consultants were made to apologise to her. Extra five years right there.
|
>> Letby was in effect caught, and they ignored and suppressed it. Those managers should also
>> be answerable to a criminal court, as should the trust executives who allowed them to
>> think that was what they should be doing.
Was she actually caught - I mean in the red handed/bang to rights sense?
At what point was there evidence of foul play from PM's and observations of other attending health care professionals.
My feel is more that the sudden number of unexplained neonatal deaths obviously raised, as they should, flags. When the dates etc were looked at together Letby was a common factor.
The failure at that point was to have a properly constituted investigation. Based on what was known, or rather not known, that almost certainly shouldn't have been disciplinary. Rather, like an air or rail accident investigation, it should have been focussed on finding the facts.
It didn't happen. Such investigations as there were lacked focus and urgency. Management seemed more bothered about Counts of Chester's reputation and how it compared with other nearby units such as the Maelor or in Liverpool/Wirral.
|
'When the dates etc were looked at together Letby was a common factor.'
If you read the timeline (there's one on the Evening Standard site), it was 8 or 9 days from the first murder to a consultant (Dr Stephen Brearey) voicing his concerns with Letby. And that was before a pattern would emerge.
|
The timeline says Breary's findings reveal an “association” with nurse Lucy Letby and her presence at the recent collapses.
That was after other unexplained deaths and at a point where somebody should have been investigating but it would need more than an "association" to point the finger at Letby there and then.
I think hospital staff missed things but it's a hell of a leap from there to suspecting murder rather than mistakes and a need for supervision and/or training.
It won't help next time if people who made honest mistakes are publicly kebbabed to satisfy a hue and cry in politics and the media.
That's why we do air and rail accident inquiries as we do; this needs to follow the same principles.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Sat 19 Aug 23 at 17:59
|
That's why we do air and rail accident inquiries as we do; this needs to
>> follow the same principles.
>>
>>
Is the NHS of capable and willing to carry out such a thing? Possibly not, my impression is there's quite an attitude of 'not invented here'.
|
>> Is the NHS of capable and willing to carry out such a thing? Possibly not,
>> my impression is there's quite an attitude of 'not invented here'.
I don't think the NHS could either but Janet Smith's inquiry into Shipman might be a model...
|
I'm not that's much of a substitute tbh, sometimes change/reviews need to be external, I think it needs to start smaller internally. That's not just CQC things but a cultural issue, why didn't any of the Consultants speak to safeguarding or go straight to the CQC about their concerns if the management did nothing?
It may turn out they did, but they'll be more to this particular relationship, ie the snr Drs and the board, than we know now.
|
|
Edit that should read, I'm not sure that's...
|
|
I'm sure not, I think we're at cross purposes. I have no real view on Corporate Manslaughter, all I can remember is it's pretty rare to be convicted of it.
|
Not sure we are at crossed purposes Sooty.
We need to understand what went wrong here but frankly, Letby's like Shipman. Doctors or other Health Care Professionals murdering patients are so vanishingly rare that we don't to have processes in place for that specific circumstance.
Rather, we need systems that identify failings and hold open and fair investigations.
The reality is that the next spike in deaths is going to be down to workload, training, competence etc.
|
I don't quite catch your drift Bromp. Are you saying we forget about holding hospital mgmt to account?
I'd like to see the reaction from the parents if you told them that the hospital executives who actively suppressed numerous warnings from senior medical staff that could have prevented their child being murdered shouldn't be investigated for criminal negligence.
|
I think we should understand precisely what happened before jumping to conclusions.
I am unclear whether the hospital management suppressed the information, whether it was suppressed at a lower level and management never had visibility.
There may also be some more systematic weaknesses in the system - there have been many NHS scandals over the years, some arising from incompetence not evil intent.
|
>I am unclear whether the hospital management suppressed the information,
>whether it was suppressed at a lower level and management never had
>visibility.
Well you might want to start with these two:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-66553970
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66120934
You're welcome.
|
I don't understand why the consultants didn't go straight to the fuzz after being dicked around by management for as long.
|
>> I am unclear whether the hospital management suppressed the information, whether it was suppressed at
>> a lower level and management never had visibility.
The evidence I've read says management, at the Salaried Senior Officer level were sighted on the problem. External people at board level much less so and in way which, even being generous to them, looks like management not being as open as they should be.
|
It's a weak manager who doesn't make the boss, and ideally the very top level, aware of a serious problem like this.
Not to say that a competent manager will go running upstairs for a solution, he or she will have the solution ready if not already in train, but as the founder and notoriously irascible boss of one company I worked for used to say "good news keeps, bad news doesn't". A lesson well learnt and from the first time I heard that I put it into practice. I got far more appreciation for that than I ever did for declaiming my triumphs.
|
I'm not sure there's much suggestion the board weren't aware of this or that there was any screening by middle managers unless I've missed that.
External people at board level much less so and in way which, even
>> being generous to them, looks like management not being as open as they should be.
>>
Who was external but sat on the board?
|
>> External people at board level much less so and in way which, even
>> >> being generous to them, looks like management not being as open as they should
>> be.
>> >>
>>
>> Who was external but sat on the board?
I mean people who were outside the executive managemet team:
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/aug/20/lucy-letby-nhs-trust-chair-says-hospital-bosses-misled-the-board
|
|
It seems that the board had the report given to them but they didn't read it, going by that report.
|
The reality is that the next spike in deaths is going to be down to
>> workload, training, competence etc.
>>
You can put lack of leadership and management in front of those. How many cover ups and scandals has there been in maternity wards alone in the past few years, half a dozen. And they are the only ones we one know about.
|
Ahhh, you're right, there was more before Breary started pointing a finger. The Standard's timeline is incomplete.
Time to change my Newspaper...
|
>> At what point was there evidence of foul play from PM's and observations of other
>> attending health care professionals.
Semantics, I should have said "could have been caught". They weren't because management preferred sweeping it under the carpet to looking properly at the causes of those deaths.
It wasn't up to the consultants to present the evidence, and they were not in a position to mount a properly constituted enquiry into the causes of those unusual and unexplained deaths.
They should have reported it to the police themselves, but given the culture at Chester I suspect they would then have been the target for management. They did the right thing, and they probably weren't kept in the picture as to what was being done, or not.
To Terry's point, management was responsible regardless of who did the suppressing.
The leadership was rotten.. Iirc the CEO resigned when Letby was arrested and the new CEO was more or less hounded out of her job when she tried to question the culture that allowed more deaths to happen.
Last edited by: VxFan on Mon 21 Aug 23 at 11:01
|
Mad, Sad or Bad? Or any combination?
I'm not sure if its just a public sector thing because generally grievance/complaints procedures are quite thorough. But my experience of some employees legitimately in the crosshairs is to instigate a grievance/s or complaint/s in an effort to make those tasked with dealing to back off thereby deflecting from their incompetence/wrong doings. Throw in some threats of diversity issues and ETs and it becomes a real mountain to climb to progress disciplinary issues. A mountain big enough for people to take the easy option. Do nothing.
Ive seen it happen when the first line Supervisor quite rightly attempted to address blatant urine taking over a number of years as regards sickness. It was he who's integrity came into question with HR and he ultimately started to question himself. The person gained control of the whole situation by playing the system and after a number of years left with a very healthy enhanced pension. A couple of years later they tried the same routine with their partner. I don't know how that eventually played out as I retired. Everyone knew what was going on except it seemed those tasked with dealing with the matter.
Last edited by: Fullchat on Sat 19 Aug 23 at 15:49
|
Whole Life tariff.
Let the recriminations and a*** covering begin.....
|
Ruined all those lives for what?
I can’t comprehend it.
Broke her parents as well.
|
>> www.itv.com/news/granada/2023-08-23/the-culture-of-fear-is-not-isolated-calls-for-change-in-nhs-following-letby
>>
>> Calls for change within the NHS.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman is a pretty powerful voice and I suspect He and his predecessors have been banging the reform drum for some considerable time.
|
|
MRS says she was badly cut up in prison yesterday/overnight. I can’t find any news about it.
|
>> MRS says she was badly cut up in prison yesterday/overnight. I can’t find any news about it.
My niece sent me a link via Facebook messenger about it, and a boiling water/sugar attack too on her. I'll see if i still have it.
|
>> My niece sent me a link via Facebook messenger about it, and a boiling water/sugar
>> attack too on her. I'll see if i still have it.
This stuff is entirely foreseeable. It it's not prevented it will happen.
Letby will then be, perhaps understandably, claiming compo with the pres etc in full hue/cry mode....
|
|
I do so hope they’ve got this right. As in she really is the guilty party and not the fall guy for something worse.
|
Be wary of facebook news - it's full of click bait.
Went for dinner with Miss Z last night and she was telling me about a consultant vascular surgeon doctor who she knew and who was "outed" by a Sunday paper for having 15 times the national death rates.
The trust knew this and had done their own review. It turns out that the consultant was dealing with extreme cases - people who were very likely to have a catastrophic stroke within 6 months.
They patients were told the surgery was very risky and consented with full knowledge.
To avoid criticism the trust now has two consultants deal with these cases and involved in surgery and the death rate has not changed much, but costs have increased / capacity has reduced.
I wonder if someone could put a case together for manslaughter / murder - where it clearly isn't - just on stats - just like that poor woman who was accused of killing her babies based on totally incorrect statistics (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark)
I suspect less risks will be taken due to the outcomes of the Letby case.
Last edited by: zippy on Wed 30 Aug 23 at 13:07
|
>> I wonder if someone could put a case together for manslaughter / murder - where
>> it clearly isn't - just on stats - just like that poor woman who was
>> accused of killing her babies based on totally incorrect statistics (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark)
Sally Clark was a wake up call over statistics. The probability of on parent and two cot deaths is as the witness said - infinitesimally small. But then again the causes of a sudden infant death can run in families - like twins do.
One hopes the outcome in terms of ensuring expert witnesses confine themselves to their areas of actual expertise, Judges being more numerically aware etc should have moved the game on.
The Horizon case (Post Office IT scandal) suggests there's a way to go.
Several accounts of the Letby case have asked whether/how somebody should have seen the facts and had the oh s*** and multiple other profanities moment sooner.
|
>> Went for dinner with Miss Z last night and she was telling me about a
>> consultant vascular surgeon doctor who she knew and who was "outed" by a Sunday paper
>> for having 15 times the national death rates.
There was a piece on the excellent BBC R4 prog 'More or less' this morning examining the claim that 1 in 73 people who had a Covid jab had died after the jab. Quite right, 1 in 73 had died because that's what people in that age group do - they die. Those who hadn't had the jab died at twice the rate. (I have forgotten the exact figures, but that is the gist of it).
>> I suspect less risks will be taken due to the outcomes of the Letby case.
>>
Fewer, not less.
tinyurl.com/33zu4d4k
I have been missing out, lately.
Last edited by: Duncan on Wed 30 Aug 23 at 16:11
|
>> There was a piece on the excellent BBC R4 prog 'More or less' this morning
>> examining the claim that 1 in 73 people who had a Covid jab had died
>> after the jab. Quite right, 1 in 73 had died because that's what people in
>> that age group do - they die. Those who hadn't had the jab died at
>> twice the rate. (I have forgotten the exact figures, but that is the gist of
>> it).
I heard a bit of it but only passing by as I'd overslept and was late signing in for work.
When your commute is hop>skip>jump across the landing you lose discipline....
Will listen again as the bit I caught was fascinating.
>> Fewer, not less.
>> tinyurl.com/33zu4d4k
Thought that too but thought getting into a demarcation dispute was bad form...
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Wed 30 Aug 23 at 16:16
|
|
Unfortunately, the Twitter (X ) and Facebook crowd don't do Radio 4.
|
>Fewer, not less..
I thought that you'd been pulling people up on their grammar fewer often these days.
|
The point in the Sally Clark case was not so much that the probability was inaccurately stated, but that the wrong conclusion was drawn by the expert witness, who was not an expert on probability and did not understand it. Neither, clearly, did the judge or the defence at the time.
Very unlikely things happen. Like winning a lottery jackpot, which happens every week. What professor Meadow said was the equivalent of saying to the lottery winner "you can't have the prize because the odds that you could correctly have chosen the right numbers were one in fourteen million, as good as Impossible, so you must have cheated".
|
>> Very unlikely things happen. Like winning a lottery jackpot, which happens every week. What professor Meadow said was the equivalent of saying to the lottery winner "you can't have the
>> prize because the odds that you could correctly have chosen the right numbers were one
>> in fourteen million, as good as Impossible, so you must have cheated".
>>
What Meadows said would have been the equivalent of that it was 14m x 14m which would be about 1 in 196 billion.
When in fact the odds on winning a lottery in week 1 is 1 in 14 million, and it's exactly the same odds the next week so 2 in 14 million if you purchased 2 tickets and totally ignored the second factor that these conditions can have a genetic element, making it far more likely to occur.
|
>>What Meadows said would have been the equivalent of that it was 14m x 14m which would be about 1 in 196 billion
Sort of. The odds against a single event BTW are nothing like as high as for the lottery jackpot, they are about 1 in 5,000. He used a higher figure IIRC but still under 10,000. He then squared the number, a very silly thing to do. But you too are missing the point. If you can calculate the odds, then you are saying it *will* happen to someone eventually. So to say it was impossible was simply wrong.
|
A few recent findings on this...
Apparently the hospital wasn't "qualified" to treat babies that ill.
Since being told not to treat such ill babies the death rates improved. This was put down to Letby not being there. This is not true. The babies they treated after she left were not as ill.
The time-sheets that showed her working every death, this is apparently not true - there were some deaths when she wasn't working. The time-sheets were cherry picked.
Some of this here (sorry paywalled)...
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/09/lucy-letby-serial-killer-or-miscarriage-justice-victim/
|
Many professionals are now questioning the safety of her conviction. There was a detailed article in yesterday's Guardian -
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/09/lucy-letby-evidence-experts-question
|
>> Many professionals are now questioning the safety of her conviction. There was a detailed article
>> in yesterday's Guardian -
>>
>> www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/09/lucy-letby-evidence-experts-question
Having read that and the New Yorker article that was blocked while Letby was on trial I'm left uncomfortable about it.
I'm not saying she's not guilty just that, in the words used with jurors, I'm not so certain of guilt that I'm sure. For one thing, it seems verdicts were only reached after a juror bailed, or presumably was 'medicalled' out. Thereafter unanimity on some, those most clear cut, majority on others ans several where they couldn't reach a verdict even with a majority.
I fear that after another ten or twenty years the case will be referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission and, eventually, probably after two or three bites at the cherry , it will go back to the Court of Appeal.
|
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/03/countess-of-chester-hospital-lucy-letby-bacteria-outbreak/
Sorry it's behind a paywall...
Apparently the Pseudomonas bacteria which can be lethal to babies was found in the taps of the neo-natal unit where Letby worked.
It had been treated but was found to have colonised taps in the nurseries of the neonatal unit over the same period of the deaths.
The US Centre for Disease Control’s Prevention and Response branch told The Telegraph that Pseudomonas was “an urgent threat” to babies in intensive care, and warned symptoms of an infection could sometimes be subtle, and cause or exacerbate other conditions.
“In our experience mortality rates during Pseudomonas aeruginosa outbreaks can be high,” a spokesman said.
“Neonatal intensive care unit patients often have defects in their immune system and are often subject to large amounts of very invasive care which make them very susceptible to infections with healthcare pathogens and also, when infected, at high risk for adverse outcomes including death and severe infection."
|
I missed the July update above but as usual my source of truth (Private Eye, usually not far wrong) did a special on it after the new info came to light. It's here, but doesn't include anything on the stuff mentioned by Zippy above.
www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/lucy-letby.pdf
I didn't follow the trial in detail at the time but it did seem to me that there was a lot of circumstantial evidence - which doesn't prove innocence but I'd have thought it would have thought it meant the "beyond reasonable doubt" would be hard to achieve.
This report did make me uneasy about the decision and in places the process but as a layman I don't believe I really understand enough of the latter to form a strong view.
Last edited by: smokie on Sun 4 Aug 24 at 09:15
|
Lucy Letby - Bromptonaut
