Context
Alison Kelly was Director of Nursing at the Countess of Chester from 2014 to 2018. Her Thirlwall Inquiry evidence addresses the nursing-leadership response to the consultants’ concerns, her department’s appraisal records for Lucy Letby during the cluster period, and the absence of a parallel nursing escalation alongside the consultants’.
Key passages
Alison Kelly
I did not at that point consider the nurse in question to be the focus of the concerns. I understood the concerns to be about the pattern of deaths, and I expected that to be resolved through the service review that the Medical Director was commissioning.
Counsel to the Inquiry
And it’s correct, isn’t it, Ms Kelly, that throughout this period your department continued to record Ms Letby as a ‘professional and capable’ nurse?
Alison Kelly
That is correct, and I accept in hindsight that those appraisal records do not reflect the clinical concerns being raised elsewhere in the Trust.
What to read alongside this
See our profile of Alison Kelly, and the evidence of Dr Brearey and Eirian Powell for the ward-level nursing view.