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‘Of course I support the NHS. Everybody supports the NHS, or says they do,’ poked the comedian Frankie Boyle in one of the many campaigns promoting the health service. To admit you don’t believe in this national institution is as taboo as not caring about Britishness, about goodness, about people. The public is keen to
On 21 August Lucy Letby, a neonatal nurse, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six others (doi:10.1136/bmj.p1931).1 The case has raised many questions for the NHS about the systemwide implications of these deaths: why were opportunities to stop her missed, why were staff’s concerns about Letby not sufficiently acted on, and what will it take to resolve some of the deep seated problems in the NHS’s organisational culture?
Since 2015 there have been three separate inquiries into NHS maternity services: Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury and Telford, and East Kent NHS trusts (doi:10.1136/bmj.h1221 doi:10.1136/bmj.m4797 doi:10.1136/bmj.o2520).234 A fourth into Nottingham NHS Trust is under way (doi:10.1136/bmj.p1636).5 These inquiries share common findings: lack …
Staff must be heard not threatened
The case of Lucy Letby, convicted of the murder of seven babies and attempted murder of another six, has caused shockwaves among the public and health communities alike. The first reaction was naturally dismay and disbelief that a member of a caring profession deliberately and repeatedly harmed helpless babies in her care. There are precedents, of course, in the actions of Shipman, Allitt, and others,123 but the rarity of such cases makes them all the more dreadful and incomprehensible.
Although the intentional harm underlying this gross breach of patient safety is rare, the subsequent failures to identify and acknowledge serious problems are sadly much more common. Doctors at the Countess of Chester Hospital rightly thought that they were seeing more deaths than expected, but they were unable to convince managers in charge of services that this was not simply the result of chance. When the pattern continued, not only did they have their concerns �