Doctors Wage War on NHS Managers After Letby Murders
Senior doctors are calling for stricter oversight of NHS managers following allegations that hospital administrators failed to address grave errors related to the case of child serial killer Lucy Letby. The Telegraph has more.
Senior doctors are demanding a crackdown on “unaccountable” NHS managers after hospital bosses were accused of “walking away from life-destroying mistakes” in the case of child serial killer Lucy Letby.
The British Medical Association, which represents doctors, led calls for senior health service administrators to be held accountable to a regulator akin to the General Medical Council (GMC), which can strike off doctors who have harmed patients.
The calls came as victims’ families and MPs warned that the inquiry ordered by Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, into how Letby was able to attack or kill 13 babies will not have the power to conduct a proper investigation.
A statement from solicitors representing two of the families affected said the inquiry was “inadequate” because “as a non-statutory inquiry, it does not have the power to compel witnesses to provide evidence or production of documents and must rely on the goodwill of those involved to share their testimony. This is not good enough”.
The families were backed by Labour. Wes Streeting, the Shadow Health Secretary, said the inquiry needed “the full force of the law behind it”.
Concerns over the role of NHS managers in the Letby case were sparked by the revelation that paediatricians at the Countess of Chester Hospital had repeatedly raised concerns about the nurse, which were not acted on by senior administrators.
In one case, a consultant was told: “Action is being taken… All emails cease forthwith.”
David E. Ward, a retired cardiologist, warned that NHS managers are unaccountable and said those who refused to listen to whistleblowers’ concerns “have blood on their hands”.
Sir Duncan Nichol, the former chairman of the NHS trust at which Letby worked, told the BBC he believed the board of the Countess of Chester Hospital was “misled” by hospital bosses and told there was “no criminal activity pointing to any one individual”.
Doctors say the powers of managers in hospitals has increased over time to an extent that non-clinical administrators are now overruling clinical advice or decisions.
Medics’ demands for greater accountability for managers were backed by senior Tory MPs. One minister said: “Hospital managers’ instincts are to cover things up instead of investigate them, and it has led to patients dying. There is a widespread, systemic problem, and it definitely needs sorting out.”
Tony Chambers, the Countess of Chester Hospital’s Chief Executive during the period in which Letby murdered seven babies and attempted to murder six others, went on to hold a string of other lucrative NHS positions.
Prof. Phil Banfield, an obstetrician who chairs the BMA’s U.K. council, said doctors believed there was a need for “non-clinical managers in the NHS and other health service providers to be regulated, in line with the manner in which clinical staff are by professional bodies”.
Dr. Kevin O’Kane, a consultant in acute internal medicine, added that “there is no excuse for not bringing in professional regulation for NHS managers”, while Marc Aitken, a consultant rheumatologist, said “the lesson from the Lucy Letby case” was that “NHS management should face the same rigorous scrutiny of their practice as clinicians”.
Worth reading in full.
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I wonder if the same doctors would be willing to complain about other less competent doctors or would they just close ranks; as usual?
To be fair, the few hospital doctors that I know would happliy sell a bad GP down the river.
What about a good one?
Why would one attack a good GP?
Perhaps because they think independently from the establishment?
I thought this was the Daily SKEPTIC?
No possibility that Lucy Letby was simply the Doctors scapegoat for their failings?
These are the same doctors that were happily ventilating anyone who so much as coughed within their earshot during Covid then proceeded to pump the population full of an extremely dodgy vaccine for an imaginary illness but they’ll probably get away with that scot free.
Unfortunately it’s 30 to 35 years with no chance of parole for this (almost certainly) innocent young nurse.
Strange how these serial killers are all nurses, isn’t it?. Apparently Doctors are incapable of committing crimes.
Here’s how they stick together and manage to blame someone else for their incompetence.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-64351184
I’m not saying Lucy is innocent, I haven’t scrutinized all the details of the case or followed it closely even, but there are people who I respect raising valid concerns and putting forth interesting problems they have with the case. Also of note, this wouldn’t be the first time a nurse was sent down due to a miscarriage of justice. Just one example from the NL here. And the reporter, De Vries, who was shot and killed two years back, was an incredible and fearless man who uncovered one hell of a lot of corruption in his career, poking one too many hornets nests with regards to gangsters/politicians, therefore acquiring many a target on his back, but I won’t go off on a tangent… ”Lucia de Berk (born 22 September 1961), often called Lucia de B., is a Dutch licensed paediatric nurse who was the subject of a miscarriage of justice. In 2003, she was sentenced to life imprisonment, for which no parole is possible under Dutch law for four murders and three attempted murders of patients under her care. In 2004, after an appeal, she was convicted of seven murders and three attempted murders. Her conviction was controversial in the media and among scientists, and it was questioned by the… Read more »
Perhaps you have forgotten Harold Shipman, a doctor and probably the most prolific murderer of all time in the UK.
Can I recommend a 2003ish BBC series, Bodies, written by Jed Mercurio of Line of Duty fame. Doctor friends tell me it’s uncannily like real life, but then Mecurio had been a doctor.
It’s not for the feint hearted but covers so many of the issues raised by the Letby murders.
…faint hearted….
A marginal error.
There were several comments about this case in today’s news roundup which indicate that everything is not as it seems. Perhaps Mogwai will weigh in shortly.
It’s odd isn’t it, that Letby has been convicted with no hard evidence, only circumstantial and hearsay evidence. The “expert” medical witness has no qualifications or experience in neonatal care, he approached Cheshire Police via his for-profit paediatric consultancy company. He alleged air emboli in several Deaths, but had no experience of them and was not aware that small premature babies often have leaky blood vessels and intestines, they swallow a lot of air. Patient records were often not entered on the day of observation, and frequently ended up in the wrong patient’s record. Witnesses in court changed their recollections of a specific patient after 8 years and treating thousands of patients since the events of 2015/6. Deaths continued in the CoCH neonatal ICU after Letby was suspended, only reducing after an “aged consultant” was eased out. Hospital waste water problems in around and above the NICU were common, often weekly and there were at least 2 NICU floods with what was essentially sewage. Swab tests showed many pathogens present that were very dangerous to neonates. The hospital closed the NICU, did a massive clean out and also demolished the building and rebuilt it, hiding any evidence about the waste… Read more »
I too was surprised at the low quality of the evidence used in this case. Perhaps I’m being cynical but it seemed as if the criminal justice system was anxious to throw some meat to the inevitable baying lynch mob, just like in some previous cases. I’m not jumping to any conclusions about her guilt or innocence, it just appears the trial was not conducted in a robust way befitting such serious accusations.
Yes I am deeply troubled by these “statistical” murders, where the evidence is largely interpretation of arithmetic. Ben Green comes to mind and there doubtless a few others, especially in non-medical cases. I am even reminded of cases like Salem Witchcraft and McMartin Preschool, or the Lillie & Reed case, in which the authorities and the public develop mass hysteria, fuelled by the media and by the religious and cultural norm of the day. Sometimes here is tendency towards cover-ups of public sector blunders, a search for a scapegoat. Sometimes there is police trawling to create a massive crime out of nothing. There is also a drift towards retrospective false “realisations” that what were seen at at the time as chance are subsequently, and incorrectly, misinterpreted as evidence of criminal activity. Perhaps in a decade or two we may re-evaluate this case.
I see you’ve caught my downvoter.
“Doctors say the powers of managers in hospitals has increased over time to an extent that non-clinical administrators are now overruling clinical advice or decisions.”
Wait, are we still talking about the Letby case, or have we changed tack to encompass everything that has happened since March 2020?
Perhaps doctors see some form of reckoning on the horizon and want to ensure someone else will shoulder their ethically questionable burden accrued since 2020.
See my post below.
A regulator like the GMC. This one?
https://www.bmj.com/content/379/bmj.o2674
‘Senior doctors are calling for stricter oversight of NHS managers following allegations that hospital administrators failed to address grave errors related to the case of child serial killer Lucy Letby… Senior doctors are demanding a crackdown on “unaccountable” NHS managers after hospital bosses were accused of “walking away from life-destroying mistakes” in the case of child serial killer Lucy Letby‘ How could this possibly be allowed to happen? At the beginning of the Stephen Nolan Show on BBC Radio 5 Live last night, Roy Lilley, ‘a former NHS Trust boss’, and Eileen Chubb, ‘a former whistle-blower and founder of a charity, Compassion In Care’, explained how: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001psgl But everything Roy Lilley and Eileen Chubb said could equally explain how the harms, including deaths, caused by Covid vaccines have not been addressed: Roy Lilley: “At the first sign of trouble, managers always circle the wagons, they think about the reputation of the organisation, and then three things happen: First is something called cognitive bias – that means that we look at things through a process that simplifies our thinking, about how we think about things through the filter of our experience, so if someone comes to you and says ‘We think… Read more »
In the wake of the Zane Gbangbola case it seems wise to be sceptical about how inconvenient facts gets ignored or denied if they run counter to the official narrative and are embarrassing to public sector managers.
PS: Though I support the campaign to review and publicise the case I am dismayed at how XR appropriated it as “the first official UK to officially die from climate change”, apparently with the agreement of Zane’s family, rather than as an example of a wagon-circling public sector cover-up.
Hospital Waste Water?
Site to be demolished.
Something stinks here methinks.
“Action is being taken… All emails cease forthwith.”
I was once told something similar about something trivial in comparison to this. I followed it with an email asking why emails had to cease?
The irony of this case is that the nhs and its agencies on average take the life of almost 600 unbor babies every day throughout England and Wales. Of course, that’s not murder, it’s “healthcare”. I wonder if the slow response to these neonatal deaths reflects a devaluation of human life generally in the state health service?
A very interesting 14mins interview with barrister Mark MacDonalds here;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwunlsP6nbA&ab_channel=Channel4News
Prof Fenton and Dr Clare Craig chiming into the debate and raising irregularities here;
https://twitter.com/profnfenton/status/1692837686166368660
No no no. Not another regulator!
Just apply the law and apply employment contracts and staff handbooks. Use disciplinary proceedings and when failures are found sack them. Make sure they do not creep back in another area at an even higher salary.
Personal accountabvility is always better than a regulator.
If the evidence against management inaction is clear then they can be sued for negligence in the civil courts and be bankrupted.
This article appears to
suggest we need another layer of management, managing the managers?
Fear of Litigation. ———A big problem.
I was once tasked with conducting an independent professional review into the death of a patient under the care of a friend and professional colleague in the same specialty (not on my own; there were two of us). We found numerous failures in care, including both clinical and organisational problems, and listed all of these in our report. It was not pleasant to be critical of a friend in that context, but it was right. The failures in care of one of my own patients who was treated by another team were so egregious that, when the relatives said they were too angry and distressed to face writing a complaint, I wrote it myself – against my own hospital. I think I speak for many medical professionals in saying that professionalism requires the honest and full examination of the facts, and that protectionist behaviour and cover-ups are completely unacceptable. I have some experience of medical negligence claims and, while I have not like some had the opportunity to hear the entire Letby case the evidence, while circumstantial, is compelling. There was only one common factor in all the cases – the presence of one person when an acute collapse occurred.… Read more »