Ninam

@DebbieKennett @Voice4theDead @cheshirepolice Also, what about retired detectives working on cold cases … all those Qs about their access to sensitive info

@Voice4theDead @cheshirepolice Is Dewi Evans not in breach of the GDPR principles on law enforcement data processing? If he's no longer working on any cases he should not have continued access to sensitive medical data. #three-four-five" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">ico.org.uk/for-organisati…

Think someone needs to search Dewi Evans’ house for the hoard of sensitive medical notes he evidently still has, despite no longer being appointed as ‘expert’ on the #LucyLetby case 👀 ⁦@cheshirepolice⁩ telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/0…

@NeoDoc11 Totally agree. There have to be clear boundaries of practice and the keyword to safe and appropriate oversight is communication, communication, communication (with the medical team). Employer directives on ACP roles have exceeded this fundamental requirement, risking pt safety.

ACPs can be a valuable asset to clinical teams when their roles function within clearly defined boundaries that respect the fact that ultimate responsibility for patient care lies with the consultant. When used appropriately - within a transparent framework of clear accountability, supervision, and scope of practice - ACPs can and do enhance patient care and team efficiency. The current problem arises when ACPs are deployed inappropriately - making decisions beyond a clearly defined remit or operating without sufficient oversight - while the consultant remains legally and professionally accountable for outcomes they were not aware of or involved in. If an employer endorses ACPs to act in a consultant’s name without clearly communicating their activities or responsibilities, and still expects the consultant to bear ultimate accountability, the only legally defensible position for that consultant is to document that they have raised this, explained why it’s a problem and offered a possible solution. Once such concerns have been formally raised and they are then ignored, responsibility for any resulting patient safety issues transfers to the Trust. This is not a hypothetical risk - it is already being tested in coroners’ courts. Increasingly, there are attempts by Trusts to hold consultants accountable for decisions made by ACPs operating outside their competence or authority. Those who speak up about this are often harassed or accused of bullying, particularly when their frustration is misdirected toward ACPs themselves rather than the organisational structures that enable inappropriate practice. To me it’s very clear that the problem does not lie with ACPs as individuals. Many ACPs I know and deeply respect are highly skilled, conscientious and hard working professionals who make significant contributions to providing excellent patient care when deployed appropriately. I have personally worked in environments where ACPs have been integrated safely and effectively. Such settings, however, are rare nowadays. In summary, the root cause is not the existence of ACPs, but the lack of a nationally defined, specialty-specific scope of practice and governance framework. Nothing prevents us from establishing such a framework except a lack of political and institutional will. This may be argued to be largely due to the government’s vested interests in the ongoing fragmentation and privatisation of healthcare. But honestly - there are also other reasons for it, such as the expense of excellent modern healthcare and how much we are willing to contribute to it within our society. For the time being, patient safety and professional accountability remain compromised. And we are not being honest enough with our patients about it. @drphilhammond @PeterElston1 @DavidRoseUK @Channel4News @DavidDavisMP @wesstreeting @Keir_Starmer @Michelehal7344 @Voice4theDead @MartynPitman @parthaskar @TheBMA @gmcuk

@merchant47 Biased opinion by Dr. M

If Dr. Marnerides knew about the ventilator settings. Why didn’t he put 2 and 2 together? If he didn’t know [about the excessive settings]—why not?

@merchant47 Nobody, Yes, Nobody would be able to give an answer to that question. But apparently, the trial suggestion that Lucy Letby did this marks her as the only one with the specific knowledge of how to do it.

Further questions. How did Letby know the exact amount of air to introduce? Too little would have no effect, while too much would cause an immediate and obvious problem, risking detection. Also, how was the pressure maintained to ensure that the diaphragm remained splinted?

@BBCMBuchanan This maternity/neonatal crisis was predicted a long time ago. Look + you might see a correlation bet SRN-qual midwife numbers dwindling & safety issues rising. I trained old-school. Still believe nursing needs to be a prerequisite for midwifery, & neonates a branch of midwifery.

Operation Lincoln has been running for years and successfully worked alongside the much more forensic Ockenden review, without it being compromised. Its not clear why the review thinks its work could harm the police investigation. And...

NEW: The rapid review into maternity care in England has chosen to remove the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS trust from the 14 orgs it was going to examine. It says its to protect the integrity of an ongoing police investigation into care at the trust. But...

When I first heard about Lucy Letby's case, I had no reason to doubt the allegations against her. I began following the case because, as a neonatologist with a further interest in risk management and patient safety, I felt I needed to understand how it could possibly happen that someone could murder or attempt to murder any babies on my unit without anyone seemingly noticing or doing anything about it. I worried - could this have happened to me and my colleagues? And I hoped if it had, we would have noticed and acted on it properly much sooner. As I followed the case via the media, I became increasingly confused by the medical evidence being presented. At first, I assumed the journalists simply didn’t understand the expert testimony and were not reporting correctly - surely no one could genuinely believe claims as medically absurd as babies being murdered by injecting air into a nasogastric (NG) tube? I had this conversation with many colleagues - Neonatal consultants, doctors in training and neonatal nurses. We were all really shocked by what was being reported. But I decided to wait until after the trial concluded before forming any real opinion as it was only then that enough information would become available that would make it clear as to what was actually said. After the convictions, like many of my colleagues, I sat down to watch the interview with aspiring TV star doctor Ravi Jayaram. My jaw dropped as I heard his appallingly misleading statements about extubation made on national television. I have still kept the messages I exchanged with Neonatal colleagues that evening. All of us who watched were saying - surely he didn't just say that the only possibility for a 25 weeker to have extubated was for it to have been done deliberately? I cannot even begin to explain how absolutely ridiculous that statement is. The sensational manner in which it was also delivered immediately made me ask myself - did I make a cognitive error in assuming no actual real doctors could have said the medical nonsense reported by the journalists? Is it possible that the experts and medical witness doctors involved really have said things that were so ridiculous in court and got the judge and jury to believe this nonsense? I then started looking through the information publicly available post-trial and I discovered that yes, this kind of flawed medical reasoning had indeed been accepted as fact. I was really shocked and decided to speak up, which I did as soon as the media gag was lifted. Thank you to Felicity Lawrence @guardiannews for making me feel safe to speak up. At the stage when I first spoke up, I still didn’t know whether Lucy Letby was innocent. What I did know, however, was that the medical basis of her conviction was deeply flawed. I also knew - but this is due to my law degree rather than me being a Neonatologist - that there were multiple legal reasons for why this conviction was unsafe as well. However, I wasn't as interested in this as I wouldn't want for someone's sentence to be quashed on legal grounds if they were genuinely guilty. It remained possible, as far as I could see, that Letby had harmed the babies. What was certain, however, was that if she did, she certainly didn't do it in the way that was claimed. However, it stands to reason that a serial killer could more easily operate in a unit where substandard care was the norm - when overall competence is low, people are far less likely to recognise when something is seriously wrong - something I know very well from personal experience of being a clinician dealing with risk, and having worked for the CQC and the Ockenden inquiry. After some time, I was instructed as an expert in the case. I took some annual leave and temporarily left the Ockenden review so I could give myself some time to properly look through everything. I then discovered many incidents of significantly substandard care with subsequent lack of insight by the clinicians involved and an almost complete absence of meaningful learning from mistakes. Unfortunately - neither of these are uncommon events in maternity and neonatal care these days. And neither is scapegoating someone. However - what was truly stunning in this case, and was definitely new to me at that point in time, was scapegoating via the criminally convicted serial killer route (usually people are just bullied out via employment tribunals, GMC/NMC and occasionally via the criminal courts for Gross Negligence Manslaughter route). For one year now, I have lived with the knowledge that a committed hard working competent nurse is in prison for crimes that never happened, whilst the doctors responsible for very poor care remain celebrated as “heroes” and continue practising without consequences. And the medical experts also continue to practise with no consequences. Putting this out here for the record. Not much else I can do. Thank you so much to @drphilhammond for continuing to expose this disgraceful MoJ. @drphilhammond @legalmarkmc @DavidDavisMP @DavidRoseUK @PeterElston1 @Michelehal7344 @reasonoverfear @DOckendenLtd @wesstreeting @PrivateEyeNews @Jeremy_Hunt @MartynPitman @Voice4theDead

@NeoDoc11 Thank you for this. Most people will have no idea how brave it is so make this statement.

@keniallan @NeoDoc11 Someone built up the case as a cash-cow, and it’s not just one person. It’s a bandwagon-full, laughing all the way to the bank.

@NeoDoc11 i hope you’re successful with your campaign (if it is that) i’ve thought from the day i saw her being arrested that she’d done nothing wrong, im building trade and over the last 5 yrs ive been consistently astonished at the stupidity of the educated class in this country

@merrick_diana @William26139338 @gill1109 @wesstreeting I did not follow up on her. The LucyLetby trial is what I’ve been caught up with. Fr distant memory, they used the duty rota. I tried to analyse the situation but it was too much for a young me. What I can now tell you: There’s still a minefield unknown abt insulin in neonates.

@Ninam41397 @William26139338 @gill1109 @wesstreeting Do you still believe Beverley is guilty beyond reasonable doubt?

Every single neonatal unit in the UK contributed to this research project, for the Countess of Chester! So in the year or so prior to 2014 the neonatal lead was already too busy to commit CoCH to join in this National project. fn.bmj.com/content/110/5/…, thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/upl…

@Overlordmainst1 Shows even the most experienced of clinicians can get things wrong or have gaps in knowledge.

Dr Michael Hall wasn’t called as a witness for Lucy Letby’s defence for one obvious reason. He didn't read the insulin assay label & seemingly stupidly agreed with the prosecution assertion that insulin was administered deliberately in a secret meeting, sealing her fate pre trial

@merrick_diana @William26139338 @gill1109 @wesstreeting I was a young nurse w BAllitt and believed a perpetrator had been caught. Not so with LucyLetby. Eyes wide opened by this time and have enough experience not to believe the codswallop weaved.

I very much doubt it's the 'lowest point.' It's just the first time habitual scapegoating has been publicly exposed on this scale. Failures run so deep that blaming one nurse for systemic breakdown is frequent. This isn't an isolated low, but very painful public surfacing of a deep, historical failure.

@gill1109 Or they declined for fear it would show them up.

@MartinSLewis Tried it when I was young and vain. Eyes were too sensitive, had to forget contacts.

Just had my third 'contact lenses lesson'. I finally managed to get a lens in each eye after much effort, though getting them out was hard. Still not good enough for them to let me buy the lenses. Did anyone else out there find it this hard!

@davidhencke I understand that pension recalculations at my Trust has a backlog of several years (10yrs+). My dispute was resolved 'quickly', I think, because I managed to get hold of the Pensions Officer plus a separate member of staff as I had an 'overpayment' which I challenged.

@Ninam41397 Really pleased it is all settled. NHSBSA were hopeless in replying to me on the story

Low paid NHS workers cheated out of their pension by a hospital trust management blunder davidhencke.com/2025/08/11/exc…

@davidhencke PS - Mine is another London NHS Trust, not the one in the article.

@davidhencke Update: I finally had my revised NHSBSA Pension statement, recalculated after a dispute in Feb/March this year. Received >£7000 lump sum + extra pension fr. shortfall in calculation plus an increment in my now corrected pension. No need to pay the £5000 they said I owed! 😀

I have a lot to say but I’m also lost for words. Advice - stop seeking justice from the hands that buried it. You won’t find justice in the same pattern that silenced the pain of millions. There will not be justice from those who lead us. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

@Jericho_library Too far away... She was a legend.

In this historical portrayal, historian and actress Leslie Goddard brings Lucy to life, paying tribute to both true comic legend and the real woman behind the myth. #JerichoLibrary #JerichoPublicLibrary

@DevilsAdvocat47 .. Maybe Dr DE who showed how easy it was to administer air covertly could also show his workings for calculating just the right dose for Insulin in the scenario above.

@DevilsAdvocat47 What's fascinating is the idea of #LucyLetby calculating just the right amt of insulin for the TPN bags, ensuring babies became hypoglycaemic, yet still able to respond to boluses of glucose given. The consultants should have shown how 'easy' this calculation was, 'as evidence'.

Lucy Letby is innocent - Lets take Lucy out of the equation & only deal with what has been alleged to have happened & look @ the evidence. Where is the evidence a baby was injected with air deliberately, or a TPN bag was injected with insulin deliberately ?????

Rhett Butler & extracting a 'favour' from an influential 'friend': "Influence is Everything Scarlett, Remember that when you get arrested. Influence is Everything, and guilt or innocence merely an academic question." Gone With The Wind