Lucy Letby Case #12

[Haveyouanywool]

Can someone please explain what the issue with the bile is? My son had this tube attached to a bag and they said it was ‘on free drainage’ and they often said it was filled with bile. Is that what they refer to? And why should there not be bile? TIA

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the position where you’ve vomited so much that you’ve totally emptied your stomach, vomited some more then this horrible green, quite corrosive, liquid comes out, that’s bile. I’ve been there, not good!
Bile is produced in your liver and stored in your gall bladder. It is released when you eat fatty food as it helps to break it down.
Bile is released in the small intestine, after the stomach, so it should not be in there. After food has been partly digested in the stomach a valve at the lower end, the pyloric sphincter, opens allowing the food to pass through. Gut movement, peristalsis, should help insure the direction is only one way.
In premmie babies the pyloric sphincter may not have developed sufficiently and therefore be weak, allowing movement back into the stomach. The same might apply if you’re throwing rings round yourself and the pressure forces the sphincter open allowing bile to enter the stomach . Not that I’m saying that’s what happened to this baby.
I think the defence will be going down the route of suggesting a ‘blockage’ forced the bile back, especially as the poor wee soul had never had a bowel movement.

 

[freaknasty]

If she is guilty those texts are sickening.

 

[Deeznutslol]

Do people think she's pretty though? I think she's very average and looks sickeningly bland...I think that's what's fascinating to me...how someone who looks like a total basic b*tch could actually be a cold blooded killer. I personally think she did do it (very happy to be proved wrong) but it does blow my mind that someone that dull and drippy sounding could so something so completely unnatural!

When people say she’s attractive what they mean is she essentially fits the western beauty standard which is imposed onto women (white, tall, slim, blonde hair, blue eyes, well proportioned features etc).
Regardless of whether or not you personally think she’s good looking, she 100% fits this beauty standard and there will be plenty out there who do find her attractive and this will almost certainly cause bias when it comes to making judgements about her. As someone else previously mentioned as well, we do tend to associate people who look a certain way with having certain traits, hence why so many people are scratching their heads going ‘surely it couldn’t be her? She looks so innocent’.

 

[EllsBellsWells]

From what we have heard so far the unit was understaffed but not to the degree that babies were put in harms way, on several shifts Lucy had time to text on numerous occasions and also leave the baby she was supposed to be looking after to try and get into family room [ she was told on more than one occasion not to!).
Also in every baby collapse there was a Dr on scene trying to resuscitate very quickly so no lack of staff there either.

I think the understaffing might be a general issue rather than who was present there and then in that you just end up with overworked, frazzled and exhausted staff generally. So even if you had a fully staffed shift one day, if a couple of them were overworked on an understaffed shift the day before they’re probably not going to be expected to perform at their best because they’re going to be burnt out from doing two people’s jobs the day before.

It is so worrying how common it is these days for staff to have to work like this. I really hope one thing to come out of this is the impact of understaffing and what that does to highly trained and skilled people. People cannot be expected to deliver their best work if they are burnt out most of the time. These people must have been exhausted and we all know that NHS are rarely paid properly for what they do. Understaffed and under appreciated

 

[MmmB777]

Defence is looking extremely weak. Attacking the expert witness with wording, considering 'killed by administation of air into the stomach via NG' is the same thing as 'enough air injected into the stomach to splint the diaphragm'.

This. Exactly this. There’s no contradiction in what he’s saying. It’s basically just more detail/different phrasing. Borders on embarrassing for Myres imo can see it’s worked on a lot of people reading it today though so I hope it was clearer for the jury.

 

[Tofino]

It might be because of the poor care the defence want to cross examine her. Not to challenge her but more to ask questions that basically reinforce their argument that poor care was the cause of the deaths. I’d actually prefer that than try and discredit her account of events (which might happen with child E I think it is).

 

[IdeletedbutI'mbackagain]

Yep. I got sent home - apparently 1cm dilated and cervix too far back. 'You're not in labour'.

5 minutes later, baby was born - in the hospital corridor. Those waiting in the corridor had full view...whilst some moved away to give me privacy, one man just stood there watching before he was told to move.

Honest to God, that's so scary but the bit about the fucking man who had to be moved really stoked my anger because when I was in labour with my first they didn't really believe how far along I was or how close my contracts were (for some reason although I do have a baby face and this has caused me issues my whole life with people taking me seriously) and there was this fucker in the waiting room just STARING at me as I my waters poured everywhere. I was too polite to tell him to fuck off. I wouldn't be now.

I ended up being too late for an epidural etc.

God I wish I told him to fuck off.

 

[Tofino]

Maybe she's reviewed the baby's notes or events leading up to death, or maybe spent a lot of her time replaying what happened prior to the collapses, so would remember these details?

Sorry, I just don’t buy it when in context with everything else she has repeatedly forgotten throughout multiple police interviews. Bearing in mind with child a it was her signature for administering the fluid on the records. So reading the notes to refresh her memory wouldn’t have pointed to the other nurse. if she spent so much time replaying the events why can’t she remember other details of those events?

Do you really not find it suspicious that the only detail she seems to remember is placing another member of staff with the baby just before they collapsed?

ETA: it’s like she knows that the collapse is linked to something occurring just beforehand. Funny (not funny) that.

 

[Faith61]

Think we can all agree, LL is so unprofessional and not giving any families the space they need obsessed this is really awful that poor mum

This is all really unnerving in the context of LL..she would scare me to death in that scenario..either that or i would want to knock her block off!!

 

[OldBlondie]

To be clear- the messages were in the space of an hour and a half. And we all know that doesn’t mean you are literally on your phone for 90 mins and doing absolutely nothing else other than texting.

I still don’t see how the texting could be used against her really.

I would like to think that if I was in a critical care unit and it was busy, the nurses would actually be making sure I’m ok and not just standing at my bedside texting. I know it maybe wasn’t continually, but still over an hour and a half she was just complaining to the colleague, and also said she’d been into room one doing meds (again not where she should be as per shift leader) rather than looking after her baby. Strange the txting suddenly stopped at 11pm, and the collapse was like 10-20 mins later, maybe that’s just another coincidence involving her being in that room (that she initially lied about being in) tho

 

[MmmB777]

Absolutely every nurse and doctor and medical expert has come under such scrutiny and they’re accused of not being truthful regularly, even seen people suggest those not being named are up on charges themselves… and yet Letby’s clear abuse of her duties doesn’t even make her a shitty nurse and we are looking at it all as favourably as possible. I do find that really hard to understand but that is not personal or criticism. There isn’t a shred of evidence to say Letby felt her senior and the designated nurse weren’t handling the parents grief well, she was told to leave, but we have to believe it was because she thought things had been handled horrendously? Didn’t she text the ‘student nurse’ that patronising message about how amazing she had been? I just don’t understand why invent so many scenarios outside of what we know. If that comes up then of course! How would anybody ever get convicted of anything at all if we said well what if what if what if endlessly. When do you stop! What if the lady that’s been raped and murdered actually asked for it to happen ‍ I know we all think differently sorry, not trying to start WW3.

 

[IGiveUp22]

She is so brave taking the stand

 

[Hinchawakening]

So what’s everyone having for tea tonight?
Sorry, just trying to lighten the mood before admin have to get involved lol!!
Ive nothing to add other than let’s hope we get full court notes today keep calm and carry on guys, happy Thursday!

 

[Windowtothewall]

Dr Bohin said Child C died "with his pneumonia, not because of his pneumonia."

This just reminds me of how when they were calculating 'Covid' deaths, they were including people who died WITH Covid but not necessarily of Covid.

Seems minor but actually is a very very important distinction.

 

[MmmB777]

Is this part of her motive, to hurt them (as in inject with air, over feed with milk, insulin poison etc) and then leave it up to “fate” which ones survived and which ones didn’t after she’d done this? Although that wouldn’t explain why she allegedly kept trying to repeatedly attack some of them. I guess none of us can understand this, or her reasoning and everyone is just trying to make sense of it. Either way it’s just incredibly sad

I have always thought that. I think she enjoys the game and enjoys the crash situation. But then she also repeatedly goes for the same baby and it doesn’t feel like ‘fate’ at all, it feels very targeted. I also think she thinks she’s very clever- two smaller and slower amounts of air to make baby symptomatic so that it looks as though she has the onset of something horrible, one final large and fast amount of air that can only kill. It’s possible this is why some babies survived because she only managed to give them one of their smaller doses before she aimed to kill them. After people were shocked at baby A and the speed, I think she thinks this makes it look more gradual.
The shock from her colleague about baby Ds death just really drives this home. This baby should not have died. Her words about Lucy always being there when these ?!?!!?! moments happen is just so telling.

 

[Ibrokethegoddamnwheel]

Who is Dr Evansville?

Sorry, just trying to lighten the thread up, feels like it’s getting a bit tense in here again - let’s all try to remember that it’s okay to not agree with each other.

 

[Windowtothewall]

Thought this was interesting. And means her messages to various colleagues about how she persuaded parents to take hand/footprints is a lie? Nurse says that Melanie Taylor did that. Also LL wasn't supposed to be in the family room (that she told various people the parents were in) - why would she insist on being there at the cost of neglecting her own patient? Stuff like this makes me really question her motives.

The prosecution asks: "Whose responsibility is it to ensure the memory box is made and who takes care of it?"

The nurse: "The designated nurse at the time, if they're able."

The nurse said Melanie Taylor took over as designated nurse and "partly" arranged the memory box.

The nurse explains she asked Lucy Letby to focus back on a baby in nursery room 3, but Letby went into the family room "a few times". The nurse recalled asking Lucy Letby to leave the family to Melanie Taylor.

The nurse tells the court Letby did not have any designated duties to be in the family room, and told her "more than once" not to be in the family room

 

[tinkertailorsoldierspy]

I think the Dr has definitely changed his opinion as he's heard more and learnt more and the defence wasn't expecting it at all and is left with just trying to be quite accusatory now.
The Dr is coming across quite well and quite consise in my opinion.

 

[xoxo GG]

Because you lectured me on how admin staff can access notes whenever they want and in many trusts they do? Maybe just accept that LL did not do that?

The initial conversation was not actually directed to you.......it had a completely different context for the discussion.

The OP literally said maybe she did that, you’re going off on one for no reason at all

 

[I’mThankyou_]

Are you actually telling me in your hospital, admin staff have access to patient's medical and nursing notes of all patients??? If so, that is a huge breach and your hospital could get into trouble around what access and permissions are set up on the systems. It's also an offence for the person doing it if they have no reason to and it's not to do their job.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/pat-guid-clr-your-gp-record-bw.pdf

"Staff are only able to access your record when they have an official need to, they can’t look at your record for no reason. They can only see the information they need to use in order for them to do their job properly and help you manage your health. This means that your doctor will see much more of the information in your record than the receptionist does."

ICO warns NHS staff that unlawfully accessing patient records is an offence

The ICO has reminded NHS staff about the potentially serious consequences of prying into patients’ medical records without a valid reason.

www.digitalhealth.net

"Patients are entitled to have their privacy protected and those who work with sensitive personal data need to know that they can’t just access it or share it with others when they feel like it. The law is clear and the consequences of breaking it can be severe."

So why would LL be able to access notes of Child A a year after his death, and child C who she was not the designated nurse for, a year after his death?

Again - let's assume she did play over what happened to child C? Why would she not play over the fact she was there at the time of collapse, and share this with the police?

In some trusts they do.
Ward clerks have access to the drs notes as they are not stored electronically and they do the filing.
Same in clinics, they will request the medical notes from the notes department and have them set up ready for the days clinics.
Just as secretary's have access to all of their consultants paitents.
Not every Trust works 100% electronically, and not every Trust has the funding to set up permissions across the board.
Notes are forever left on wards long after a paitent is discharged because wards are often busy and requesting notes to be collected is the last thing to do.
Just like GP receptionists, they have access to your records and can see when results are returned for you.
There is a wide range of admin staff within the NHS all who will have access, some who will have no access at all.
You're quoting guidelines that most people adhere too. People don't just start browsing random medical records. But ultimately the access is there, so some people do cross the line and access files when they shouldn't.