Context
Dr Stephen Brearey was the lead consultant on the Countess of Chester neonatal unit and the first clinician to raise concerns, from July 2015 onwards, about the cluster of unexpected deaths and collapses. He kept contemporaneous notes of meetings with management and of his escalation attempts throughout 2016 and 2017. His Thirlwall Inquiry witness evidence is one of the most important single records of how consultant concerns were handled by the Trust’s executive team.
Key passages
What to read alongside this
See our pages on Tony Chambers, Ian Harvey, and the September 2016 consultants’ letter. The timeline tracks the escalation month by month.