Lucy Letby’s conviction leaves nurses ‘terrified’ to continue working for NHS

Group urges Government to establish royal commission to conduct forensic examination of evidence presented in case

Nurses have written an open letter to Sir Keir Starmer, warning that the Lucy Letby case has left them “terrified” to continue working in the NHS in case they are wrongly blamed for deaths in their care.
The group of 19 nurses argued that the recent convictions of Letby had “implications” for the nursing profession.
They have called for the Government to establish a royal commission to conduct a forensic examination of the evidence presented in the case.
In August last year, Letby was convicted of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six other infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital. A retrial in July found her guilty of the attempted murder of another child.
But several scientists and doctors have since questioned the evidence, and there are concerns that not enough weight was given in the trial to levels of understaffing, poor practice and cramped conditions in the baby unit.
The group of registered and retired nurses, plus other healthcare and medical professionals, has written to the Prime Minsiter “to communicate our growing concerns” about “the evidence presented and used to convict Ms Letby”.
The letter says: “All of us are worried that this conviction is unsafe, and as a result we and many of our colleagues are now terrified to continue working in the NHS as we believe that next time it could be one of us who blamed for a failing system.
“We believe that flawed and unreliable scientific evidence was used to convict Ms Letby, and this is having a huge impact on the nursing profession.”
The nurses said they had a “duty of candour” to speak out about their concerns and have called for a forensic review or royal commission and cross-party working group to be established to look into the case.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) states that nurses, midwives, and nursing associates have a professional duty of candour to be open and honest with patients and their families when something goes wrong with their care.
The nurses raise nine areas of concern about the case, including the fact that a report by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health from 2016 – which outlined failings in the neonatal unit – was never shown to the jury.
The report highlighted short staffing and that the unit was dealing with more premature babies than usual during the period in 2015 and 2016 when death rates spiked.
“Clear evidence of sub-optimal care on the unit needs to be acknowledged and investigated, as many believe that it may have been an important factor in several of the deaths and collapses,” the nurses write.
“During the trial, experts repeatedly misrepresented the health state of the babies, repeatedly describing them as ‘well’ and ‘stable’ when many of them were extremely premature and vulnerable. Most of the babies required respiratory support and ventilation and other medical interventions, some were being treated for infections.
“We request, a scientifically rigorous royal commission/independent review where real experts, such as forensic pathologists, medical specialists, and scientists, can conduct a detailed and meticulous forensic assessment to re-examine the evidence in this troubling case.
“We believe this is crucial for nurses, and healthcare practitioners alike so that we can feel confident and safe in our work.”
In a recent Channel 5 documentary re-examining the Letby case, Dr Svilena Dimitrova, a consultant neonatologist, warned that nurses were resigning from Britain’s baby units because they fear being accused of harming infants.
Dr Dimitrova, who works as a medical reviewer for the Ockenden independent review of maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, said NHS problems were “endemic” and nurses were frightened they could be scapegoated for failing wards.
Speaking about the Letby conviction on the programme, Dr Dimitrova, who is not linked to the letter, said: “What it has definitely led to is huge fear, amid especially the neonatal nursing body. I have never seen so many nurses resign as I have seen in the past 18 months.”
The nurses who signed the letter come from across Britain, but have chosen to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from their trusts. They have shown their NMC registration numbers to The Telegraph to verify their positions.
Last month, The Telegraph reported how nurses were warned by NHS trusts not to talk about the case or give evidence on Letby’s behalf.
The nurse acting as spokesman for the group said: “The group was formed so that we could discuss the case in safety, and we looked at each case individually, keeping a very open mind.
“And after each case it became apparent that we were talking about babies born barely viable for life, with pre-existing congenital medical conditions as well as a lot of sub-optimal care.
“The hypotheses put forward by the prosecution were just implausible and the way sub-optimal care was played down in court is horrifying, and it needs to be addressed. People are afraid because they can see how easily this can happen.
“At one point in my career I was a nurse specialist and I was working an 80-hour week and living in the nurses home and I would be called in all the time.  If there had been a cluster of deaths, the finger would have pointed at me, and clusters do happen.”
The letter will be made available on the Science on Trial website for nurses to add their names.