Resume Falsification - Who is to Blame When Doctors and Nurses Kill?

When trusted medical professionals let down their employers, more than just the hospital suffers the consequences. Sometimes, the consequences are deadly. Charles Cullen is one of those cases. As a 14-year nursing veteran, Cullen confessed in New Jersey in 2003 to killing between 30 and 40 patients. Shockingly, Cullen is not the only medical professional to kill while on the job. Dr. Michael Swango, aka “00 Swango, License to Kill” and Nurse Donald Harvey, the “Angel of Death”, are 2 other well-known cases of serial killers who happened to work in a “helping profession”. What all of these serial killers have in common, besides a desire to kill, is the ability to move from facility to facility with no track record following closely behind. When employers get an application filled with resume falsification, oversights occur and people who should be in jail are suddenly employed…again.

In Cullen’s case, it is documented that he was fired 5 times and questioned on 4 separate occasions about suspicious patient deaths. Twice he was found to have administered medication to his patients in an inappropriate manner. The outrage in this situation, as well as in the others mentioned previously, is that each hospital where he worked didn’t know about his prior activities. After he was caught, New Jersey lawmakers began questioning our nation’s employment background screening process. They suggested a better database that would include information that was missing in Cullen’s case. But is that really the answer?

The issue at hand, really, is the hospital’s willingness to report the suspicions, instigate investigations, and to report their findings to the police. In both the Swango and Cullen situations, this did not happen. When looking back at the places where each of them was employed, criminal checks were performed, but they did not uncover a record in another state. None of the current procedures for background checks expand to other states. What happens in each state is held in that state’s database, and when checks are done in other states, say if the person moves from one state to another, nothing will be found. After Dr. Swango had already killed his first few patients, he was able to get jobs at numerous other institutions where he subsequently killed dozens of other patients! Cullen was able to wiggle through the system in the same manner.

According to Forensic Nurse Magazine online, physician data is contained within 2 database systems. One is the National Practitioner Data Base and the other is the Federation of State Medical Boards. As described by Robert Wise, M.D. on the magazine’s Web site, the Federation’s database contains reports from the state medical board of every state. On the other hand, the National database gives information to hospitals and medical facilities about issues like disciplinary action, payments of malpractice insurance, and any punishments that a hospital issued to a healthcare provider. It seems like every square inch has been covered so that it becomes easy to weed out the criminals or those with malicious intent…right? Not so, says Wise. “There have been instances where hospitals have faced costly lawsuits after taking away a physician’s privileges. Instead, the physician is asked to leave, no report is generated and the physician is free to practice somewhere else.”

The best bet is to hope that the doctor isn’t a fan of resume falsification and that an employment background screening and criminal check will uncover any red flags before they are hired somewhere else. But, it has to start with the institutions properly reporting all issues with their employees in the hopes that it will positively affect the outcome for their future patients.