EXCLUSIVE: Senior doctor who tried to blow the whistle on Lucy Letby says he was ‘intimidated’ by hospital bosses and was ordered to apologise to the killer nurse
A senior consultant who tried to whistle Lucy Letby said doctors felt “intimidated” by hospital bosses who discouraged them from going to the police.
Dr. John Gibbs, who has since retired, said managers “shut off their minds too early” to the possibility of Lucy Letby killing or injuring babies in the neonatal ward.
He told the Mail he was “appalled” when in January 2017 CEO Tony Chambers called the hospital’s seven consulting pediatricians to a meeting and told them that Letby had done nothing wrong.
The hospital boss even ordered the medics to write an apology letter to the nurse.
By this stage, Letby, 33, had been working a desk job at the hospital for seven months, having been removed in June 2016 following the death of two triplets on consecutive shifts.
Dr. John Gibbs said managers ‘closed their minds too soon’ to the possibility of Lucy Letby killing or injuring babies in the neonatal ward
Lucy Letby, pictured, was found to have murdered seven children and attempted to murder six more. She will be sentenced at Manchester Crown Court
Letby went on a bachelorette weekend with friends hours before she killed her first little victim. The Countess of Chester’s nurses were away. They traveled by train and visited different bars, but ended up drinking cocktails at Vodka Revolution
She hoped to return to the unit after an internal complaint apparently found no evidence of wrongdoing.
Dr. Gibbs said he felt intimidated by Mr Chambers, who told consultants at the meeting that he was drawing ‘a line’ under the case.
Dr Gibbs’ colleague, Dr Stephen Brearey, told the BBC medics had been warned there would be ‘consequences’ if they refused to write the apology.
Dr. Gibbs said, “At the end of January 2017, there was a difficult meeting where all the pediatricians met with senior managers, including the general manager, the nursing director and the medical director.
“We were told how stressful all this had been for Lucy Letby and a letter was read from her explaining how dishonest we pediatricians had been.
“We were told that the CEO had met with her and her father and that we should write a letter of apology to Lucy Letby.
“It seemed inappropriate, but the whole meeting shocked me. I remember the CEO saying at the end that he drew a line under this issue and he ran his finger across the desk. He looked at all of us and said, “Do you understand?” I did feel somewhat intimidated.’
He said the advisers wrote the letter of apology, but added: “We didn’t think it was warranted.
“We didn’t apologize at all for raising concerns, we didn’t say anything about whether we thought those concerns were true or not, we just apologized to Lucy Letby for any inappropriate comments that may have been made and for the distress that had been caused. causes.
“We left it more general.”
Hospital director Tony Chambers (left) summoned the hospital’s seven consulting pediatricians for a meeting in January 2017 and told them that Letby had done nothing wrong. Nursing director Alison Kelly (right) has also been accused of ‘blowing off’ doctors’ concerns about Letby
The deranged nurse injected air into the helpless babies, poisoned two of them with insulin, or force-fed milk to the little victims
In a “confession,” Letby described herself as a “terrible person” before writing “I AM EVIL I DID THIS” (pictured)
The advisers said they felt they had “no choice” but to keep trying to get the police involved for the benefit of their patients.
So they wrote to Mr Chambers to record that they were still concerned about the deaths and the fact that two independent assessments, by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and a London specialist neonatologist, had failed to address whether an employee may be responsible.
Dr. Gibbs added: ‘We started to realize that we were in direct confrontation with managers and that we had no choice but to fight and get the police involved. At that moment it was us or them.’
Finally, in April 2017, Mr Chambers agreed to meet with the chairman of the local Child Death Overview Panel and a police officer who was on the panel.
Within minutes of hearing the advisers’ fears about Letby, the pair told Mr Chambers to call the police.
Asked why he thought management were so reluctant to involve the police for so long, Dr Gibbs said: ‘I think they couldn’t accept and couldn’t believe that a member of staff could kill a series of patients in the hospital. They just couldn’t believe it was possible.
“I was told that some senior nurses defended Lucy Letby vigorously and they just couldn’t believe she had done anything. I think they (managers) shut their minds to the fact that she could have done that too soon.
“It is a shame that despite all the pediatricians who expressed our concerns, our clinical experience and our repeated observations that these deaths were outside our normal experience, they were unnatural and unusual, that advice was not followed.”
Another doctor has told the Mail that he told Mr Chambers was a nurse before going to management.
Alison Kelly and Karen Rees, two other executive team managers, were also nurses.
“You wonder if they were just shielding one of their own and got blinders because of it,” the medic said.
Dr. Gibbs said he had “mixed feelings” about the guilty verdicts.
“I feel some relief that in most cases the jury has come to conclusions and that the jury has determined the truth. But of course it’s terrible for the families.’
He said it was telling that in the seven years since Letby’s departure there had been only one death in the neonatal ward.
Asked if he wished to comment on Dr. Gibbs, Mr Chambers referred to a statement he made Friday after the guilty verdicts.
He confirmed he would testify to the independent inquiry, adding that it was “the right place to look into these complex issues.”