Lucy Letby initially failed her final year placement as a student nurse after she was assessed to be “cold” and lacking empathy, a public inquiry has heard.
Her assessor Nicola Lightfoot, deputy ward manager on the children’s unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, said it was apparent to her that Letby did not have the “overall characteristics” to become a successful registered nurse.
She told the inquiry: “I found Lucy to be quite cold. I did not find a natural warmth exuding from her which I expect from a children’s nurse.
“We see students that are extremely academic, but actually from a personality point of view they don’t seem to blend into the role of being a children’s nurse which includes characteristics [such] as empathy, being kind, being friendly and being able to establish good relationships with our families.”
Ms Lightfoot said Letby‘s clinical knowledge was “not where it should be” and that she “struggled” to retain information over calculating dosages of drug medication and also to recognise side effects of common drugs.
The assessor’s report, written in July 2011, said she believed Letby required “much more support, prompting and supervision than I would expect at this stage to allow her to qualify as a competent practitioner”.
Letby is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder six others between June 2015 and June 2016.
The public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Letby’s crimes is sitting at Liverpool Town Hall, with findings published by late autumn 2025.
Ms Lightfoot told the hearing she overheard an “inappropriate” comment from Letby following the deaths of two triplet boys in June 2016.
Letby, 34, from Hereford, was later convicted of murdering the two babies.
Ms Lightfoot said she heard Letby say “something along the lines of: ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened'”.
“The way she said it seemed like she was talking about some sort of exciting event she had witnessed,” Ms Lightfoot told the inquiry.
“It wasn’t an appropriate response to the death of a child. I have never, and I have never since, seen a response like that to a nurse involved in a patient’s passing.”
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The inquiry heard Letby requested a different supervisor because she felt “intimidated” by Ms Lightfoot.
She passed the three areas she failed in after she completed a four-week retrieval placement with a different supervisor, the hearing was told.
Letby’s next mentor, Sarah Jayne Murphy, said she felt “conflicted” over later passing her but said she had met the standards required.
Ms Murphy, who also mentored Letby in her first year as a student nurse, said she remembered her being “quiet” and “shy”.
“She didn’t show good inter-personal skills with children, parents, nurses or the wider team,” she said.
Ms Murphy said Letby “often had quite an expressionless look” which she and other staff members “found awkward”.
Another nurse, Janet Cox, told the inquiry she had no concerns or suspicions about Letby’s conduct and believed she was an “exemplary nurse who was completely innocent of all the alleged crimes”.
“Obviously any death is a worry but I did not think this at the time, nor do I think now that there was anything sinister about the increase in the number of deaths/collapses,” she said.