The facts of the Lucy Letby case are harrowing. A nurse has been convicted of murdering seven of her newborn patients and attempting to murder six others. And there are suggestions that managers in the healthcare system failed to heed the concerns raised by some of Letby’s colleagues, meaning that opportunities to stop the killings and injuries may have been missed.
Everyone who has heard any of the reporting of the case will be shocked and distressed by it, but new parents, and people who are soon to become parents, may be particularly alarmed by what happened at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Mercifully, cases like this one are extremely rare. Although new parents are very unlikely to encounter someone who deliberately tries to harm their child, parents trusting their baby to the care of a neonatal unit must know what positive things they are entitled to expect. In other words, what does good practice look like?
