Or in this case 4 plus one who survived. I have never understood anyone’s desire or compulsion to end the life of another. Even crimes of passion I find difficult to quite grasp. Crimes of compassion, well yes I guess there is something in wanting to prevent suffering, but still I don’t really go for the idea of acting in a god like way (and I am not particularly religious so it isn’t that). As nurses we have access to numerous drugs that could be used to end the lives of others, but this does not mean we actually would do it. We might not enjoy caring for elderly people, but actually no one makes you work in such an environment. Colin Norris worked in two hospitals in Leeds during 2002 and during that time killed 4 elderly people by injecting them with large doses of insulin.

There have of course been a number of high profile cases of nurses and doctors killing their patients. The two that spring immediately to mind in the UK are Beverley Allitt who killed a number of children in the 1990s and  Harold Shipman a GP who is reported to have murdered countless people over decades.

Hospitals often contain people who are pretty ill, and some of those people will die. Sometimes several patients die within a short space of time and occasionally one or two individuals are particularly unlucky in being on duty when too many deaths occur. People tend to joke that they don’t want to be on duty with those people since things tend to happen when they are around. Never though have I had cause to suspect a colleague of causing the death of patients, but how would you know? What would you be looking for. Murderers don’t tend to have two heads or for example have their eyes to close together. Plus murder is pretty rare and murder committed by people meant to be providing care even rarer. Cases like the one reported on today though certainly make you think.