Letby bosses ‘bullied’ staff who raised concerns

Senior directors “actively bullied and victimised” doctors when they raised suspicions about Lucy Letby, a consultant working on the unit where the nurse killed and attacked babies has said.

The paediatrician, who has been anonymised by a court order, told the public inquiry into Letby’s crimes Countess of Chester Hospital directors “wanted us to shut up” about their concerns over Letby.

Referred to as Dr ZA, she said she feared her job was on the line.

But Dr ZA told the inquiry that by 2017 she felt she “could not live with herself” if she did not keep pushing to have Letby removed from her post.

She said in hindsight the rising number of unexpected deaths and collapses of babies from June 2015 reminded her of “the analogy of a frog in boiling water where you slowly turn the heat up”.

She told the Thirlwall Inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall: “You don’t realise at the time, because it is a gradual increase, how dramatically things are changing.”

Dr ZA said she “deeply regretted” dismissing the possibility that one of the babies Letby was later convicted of poisoning with insulin had been deliberately harmed.

The paediatrician said she was confused by blood test results that showed Baby F, who died in August 2015, had high levels of insulin but low levels of a chemical called C-Peptide, which is released by the pancreas when it produces insulin.

The inquiry and Letby’s trial both heard that if the ratio between the two is off it can indicate insulin has been administered from outside the body, but by the time she saw the results his blood sugar levels had returned to normal so she did not order a repeat of the test.

Dr ZA said while the possibility of deliberate harm crossed her mind, she dismissed it.

She said: “It just seemed so fantastical and unlikely that it couldn’t possibly be what had happened.”

Dr ZA said took a period of leave in December 2015 and had a phased return in March 2016, at which point she said concerns about Letby’s presence at the scene of so many collapses and deaths had solidified amongst her colleagues on the neonatal unit.

She said: “It was a general feeling of collective unease at the sudden unexpected and unexplained nature of events and the correlation of Lucy being present, but nobody sort of knew exactly what she was doing to have a sort of positive explanation for it.”

By the end of 2016, Dr ZA said she believed senior managers hospital trust were not just ignoring concerns about Letby, but wanted them to “be quiet”.

She said the “most definite be quiet moment” was a meeting on 26 January 2017, when the consultant body from the paediatric unit met with senior executives including chief executive Tony Chambers.

She said Mr Chambers suggested an external review which had been carried out by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), into issues on the neonatal unit, had blamed poor communication and other issues.

“Tony Chambers said he was drawing a line and we were not to cross it, it was said it in quite a threatening tone.

“I took it to mean if we were to carry on raising our concerns then my job would be at risk.”

Dr ZA said she had felt “actively bullied and victimised” by the executives at the hospital, but that she and her colleagues decided to keep pushing to have Letby removed from the unit.

She said: “There was a period of soul-searching; what point would I be happy to stop raising concerns and stop pushing, and I decided that the only point I would feel that I could sleep at night and live with myself was that if Letby wasn’t working as a nurse or as a similar position, and that someone had a forensic look.

“I felt that even if I lose my job I should persist until we reached this outcome.”

Letby, originally from Hereford, was convicted of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of seven others, including one she tried to kill twice.

She is serving 15 whole life prison terms.

The inquiry continues.