Lucy Letby Case #2

[stardust1]

Do they have to have a decent reason to dig the garden or can it just be done as a random request?

 

[acsunderland]

A few posts have mentioned the rashes. I’m not sure about neonates, someone in this field could maybe clarify, but working with adults in palliative care, when patients are entering the end of life phase, mottling rashes are a usual sign, it’s the body shutting down basically.
I presume this is what was happening with the babies, the prosecution so far have put it that it was a common trait with the babies involved, I’m just playing devils advocate but I’d have thought if the babies were deteriorating due to natural causes for example, then this would appear anyway. I’m not sure though and obviously they’ve taken that stance from medical staff who work there. I guess we will see what the defence answers for this.

Interesting yeah I’m sure it’ll all be explained x

 

[crumpets2]

She was in completely different rooms to the one was she supposed to be working in on multiple occasions though. Maybe she felt superior and thought she was in charge of the entire unit?

Perhaps. It’s hard to say without hearing a different view of why she was in the other rooms.

 

[Takemetoyourbuffet]

Same here, I do this personally and professionally. From a professional safeguarding point of view, I’m looking for things that they often lie to us about such as boyfriends and weekend activities. It’s amazing what people post publicly and don’t realise.

Do you then present them with the information you have gathered from a safeguarding point of view?

 

[hello from me]

From looking at the reports it says that it was “unexplained” on the post mortem. It was only
after the hospital came under investigation and Police became involved (presumably due to further medical findings related to the deaths) in 2017 that she was arrested. So they didn’t conclude air embolus or insulin poisoning until police / investigations for failings

How awful for the parents

 

[stardust1]

Jury sent home for the day

 

[whoareyouu]

Oh god sky news have accidentally named child c by not redacting a quote. I hope they realise and remove it

I clocked that too.

 

[MrsDimSum]

TPN feeds are administered IV, sorry if this has been posted already.

Yes that’s what I thought - I was sure that it is practice that synthetic insulin is diluted into fluids for babies in neo natal with low birth weight etc?

 

[Milktray]

Unlikely yes. Just not much context why she was always there for babies who weren’t under her care. We’re the other nurses newly qualified, not as much training etc. It is unlikely, and one hell of a coincidence and bad luck IF she is innocent. And I say IF. I am a senior nurse and I will always be there making sure my junior colleagues are okay, I respond to alarms and respond to patients being unwell if they are my responsibility or not.

A report suggested that agency staff were often called in to cover short fall.

 

[Tofino]

I don’t know how many beds the unit has but for example, a 15 bedded ICU in my Trust has about 50 band 5s, 12 band 6s and 10 band 7s. So you can go weeks without working with the same person.

Medical teams are a lot smaller but they do their rotas differently, often 4 shifts in a row then a few days off rather than sporadic shifts, so very possible it was a different Dr each time. But there is a group of consultants at the top of the unit who incidents would be fed up to. And usually all incident reports are sent to the 6s/7s (for info, as they are meant to be learning opportunities not just tellings off) and then dealt with by 1 or 2 dedicated Nurses, being sent up to trust management if deemed necessary for further investigation.

thank you this is really helpful. So would all collapses, even if they survived, be serious enough for an incident report to be fed up to the consultants for review or would it just be deaths?

I would expect if there are any incident reports and formal reviews then these would form part of evidence, not just general medical records. I wonder what the timeline is for all this being pieced together in the hospital and how it was escalated. I’m sure it will be covered as I’m sure there were reports she was put on admin duties so they would have to cover how that came about.

 

[acsunderland]

I think the timing of the facebook look ups would be interesting, would it be possible she was looking up after to see if they were okay? I could imagine someone doing that, if the parents were very upset, perhaps she looked them up to see if they were doing okay?

Professional people -
1. Is it possible that with the air injected, she was just a very terrible nurse, incompetent? I'd be interested to hear her record prior to working on the NICU , I'm assuming this will all come out.
2. Does prosecution always go first? I do always think this has an impact on the jury / public. As some people have already mentioned, after day 1 they believe she is guilty however I imagine it's possible to do a complete u turn after defense and as that's the most recent information relayed to you, especially with this trial over 6 months I wonder on the impact this has? Of course they'll do closing arguments but it must be hard for prosecution given there could be months passed between prosecution argument and the end of the trial?

Could her defense be that machines malfunctioned with air? That the insulin was an accident? Is that plausible?

Like others have said, it's so hard to prove unequivocally that she did it. Obviously the amount of times suggests it's intentional but if this was her first tike working NICU could she just be really really bad at her job?

Definatly lessons to be learnt by Hospitals, I know that everyone is stretched but especially after the remarks regarding motteling which was unusual, how did it take for 22 attempts / successes before anyone did anything about it? I find that extremely upsetting and worrying. As others mentioned, after 1 case if a suspicious death there's interveiwa etc so how with this hospital was there 22?! I expect this will form part of the defense.

Prosecution has to put their case forward so yes they go first it’ll all be reiterated during and at the end the jury will take notes throughout