Though they are held in high regard and have their patient’s lives in their hands, nurses sometimes kill their patients just because they can. In recent years, several cases have come to light where a nurse is left with someone and soon after, that patient is dead. It unfortunately sometimes takes weeks or months to figure out what they are doing. In the case of Charles Cullen, it actually took years to uncover his crimes. A sharp increase in the cases of serial killer nurses in the last 30 years have prompted authorities to institute better criminal background check procedures. Hospitals have also developed better Human Resource processes that utilize thorough employment screening to help “weed out” undesirable prospects.
In the case of Charles Cullen, neither of these measures of screening would have revealed any suspicious activity on his record. This is because even though he later admitted to killing up to 40 patients over the span of 9 hospitals since 1987, he was never caught until 2003. He later explained that he was killing his patients with drugs only when they were seriously ill and only to end their misery. This gave him the dubious title of “The Angel of Mercy”. USA Today reported in 2003 that this problem used to be “unfathomable but now it is unavoidable”. According to lawyer, nurse and healthcare administrator Beatrice Crofts Yorker, this phenomenon is something that is an “established, predictable” occurrence. Unfortunately, these types of people usually slip through the cracks during the employment screening and criminal background check stages of the hiring process.
Ms. Yorker goes on to explain that she believes that nurses and doctors kill because they want to be the hero and comes the rescue of the dying patient. This syndrome is called “Munchausen by Proxy” and serves the purpose of calling attention to themselves by creating medical emergencies. A forensic psychologist that was also interviewed for the story stated that some hospitals don’t want their reputations tainted; they simply cover up the fact that a person like this worked for them. They proceed to dismiss the person from the job, but then the person goes on to work elsewhere and do the same things. If the hospitals don’t report their suspicions and reasons for firing people who they suspect of killing, then how can employment screening and criminal background check processes catch these things?
Cullen had a similar experience with being able to cover up his past when applying for a new job in another state. In 2002, he tried to work for Somerset Medical Center. Even though they checked his credentials when he applied, their background check didn’t include instances of suspicious criminal activity in the other states where he had worked. What their credential check had missed was that Cullen was banned from patient contact at St. Luke’s Hospital in Pennsylvania after he was caught placing unopened vials of heart medications inside of the needle disposal bins rather than giving them to the patients. He quit his job and refused to cooperate with the hospital’s investigation.
Somerset’s Chief Medical Officer stated in the interview with USA Today that “Short of an actual conviction for a criminal act, there is nothing that needs to be reported when someone is fired.” What this means is that many criminal activities that go unreported and unpunished by the law are slipping through the cracks. These are activities that even a criminal background check or a thorough employment screening can’t catch! First, hospitals need to institute better systems of reporting suspicions and following through with investigations. And last but not least, hospitals need to communicate with each other to be able to report personnel issues and alert each other of employees who should never be put into a position where they can kill…ever again.
