In each case, had they been listened to sooner, then almost certainly lives could have been saved,” added Whiteing.Įvidence during Letby’s trial showed that the Countess of Chester hospital trust failed to launch a formal review into the deaths until July 2016, months after concerns had been raised to executives by senior doctors including Dr Stephen Brearey and Dr Ravi Jayaram.

“These are just three examples drawn from the many cases. Her warning came a year before staff failed to spot that Peter Connelly – who become known as Baby P – had a broken back two days before he died in 2007.Īnd more recently Hampshire hospitals NHS trust sacked Dr Martyn Pitman, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, when he raised concerns about what he saw as inadequate staffing levels in the maternity unit where he worked. Dr Stephen Bolsin, a consultant anaesthetist, could not get another job in the UK after he exposed the scandal in which dozens of children who had heart surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary in 1991-95 died as a result of poor care and what the resulting inquiry said was “dangerous” unsafe practice.ĭr Kim Holt, a consultant paediatrician, was put on “special leave” by Great Ormond Street children’s hospital in London after warning that its paediatric services in Haringey posed a serious risk to patient safety. He cited examples of doctors whose fears about risks to patient care were not taken seriously by the bosses at their hospitals. “There is sadly a long history of whistleblowers who speak up being ignored, sidelined and blamed, and sometimes forced to pay the price of their efforts with their livelihood,” said Paul Whiteing, the chief executive of the patient safety charity Action Against Medical Accidents (Avma).

While it is impossible to stop a member of staff using their position of trust to murder, the NHS will have to learn lessons from this case to minimise the risk of anything like it happening again.Įxperts have identified two key areas in which the NHS needs to make urgent improvements: proper investigation of concerns that staff raise about patient safety, and using data already collected by neonatal services to identify any unusual patterns in babies collapsing or dying unexpectedly. But she was not the first children’s nurse to attack her charges – Beverley Allitt killed, tried to kill or seriously harmed 13 children in an eight-week spree in 1991. Letby was convicted on Friday of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others at Countess of Chester hospital between 20.

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