Search results
The families of Elizabeth Wettlaufer’s victims believed that the system had let them down by putting the health professional before the patient. Comments from family members of victims reflected this anger: “They put money and reputation in front of a human life.” 12 Health care serial murder is an extreme failure of patient safety processes.
- Chris Frank
- 2020
Two recent instances of alleged health care serial murder (HCSM) highlight the complex issues associated with these occurrences and raise questions about the priority of efforts to address this problem and the adequacy of current health care safety systems for preventing such intentionally caused adverse events.
- Kenneth W. Kizer, Beatrice C. Yorker
- 2010
- Homicide and Serial Killers—Criminology Perspective
- Psychopathology of Homicide
- In Addressing Medical Malpractice, Are We Missing Medical Murder?
- A Brief History of Medical Murder—Modern and Past Cases
- Types of Medical Murderers
- The Motives
“I controlled other people’s lives, whether they lived or died. I had that power to control. After I didn’t get caught for the first fifteen, I thought it was my right. I appointed myself judge, prosecutor and jury. So I played God,” Donald Harvey, hospital orderly, killed 87. Homicide is the killing of another human being which may be divided into...
There are two main defining psychological characteristics of a serial killer which are compartmentalization and dehumanization. To neutralize feelings of guilt, serial killers compartmentalize. This allows them to develop 2 distinct social circles: (1) a close circle of friends or family whom they care about and typically do not harm, and (2) a vic...
Medical malpractice may lead to the death of a patient in cases of such reckless endangerment of human life, lack of providing adequate care, and failure to prevent antecedent error. Trends have shown an increase in police reports by physicians and next of kin regarding the death of a patient with consequent increase in criminal prosecution, in the...
Some would suggest that clinicide (the unnatural death of patients under the care of a healthcare practitioner) is a relatively recent phenomenon; however, it remains difficult to place along the timeline of human existence given several factors—such as the difficulty of identifying when these events are occurring. It is believed that medicine has ...
FBI criminal profiler Peter Smerick distinguishes between two types of medical killers: (1) the mercy killer who rationalizes that they may murder the patient to end their suffering and does so relying on the fact that autopsies are rarely done on patients who are critically ill, and (2) the hero killer who puts their patient at a substantial risk,...
The motives behind these killings can be variable, or maybe totally unknown (see Table 2). These motives can be any of the typical typologies , and the healthcare serial killer may adopt one or multiple of these motives. Attaining power and control over a patient or acclaim for successful diagnosis and saving of the patient are common themes. There...
Oct 1, 2020 · The families of Elizabeth Wettlaufer’s victims believed that the system had let them down by putting the health professional before the patient. Comments from family members of victims reflected this anger: “They put money and reputation in front of a human life.” 12 Health care serial murder is an extreme failure of patient safety processes.
- Chris Frank
- 2020
Healthcare serial killing is difficult to detect, which makes protecting patients from this insidious harm challenging. In 2016, Elizabeth Wettlaufer confessed to murdering eight long-term care residents, attempting to murder four others, and assaulting two more while working as a registered nurse in Ontario, Canada (R v. Wettlaufer, 2017). These events prompted the College of Nurses of ...
- Erin Tilley, Catherine Devion, Anne L. Coghlan, Kevin McCarthy
- 2019
Aug 9, 2024 · Insufficient vetting of staff, poor surveillance and oversight, and a failure by authorities to act on concerns raised by suspicious colleagues or witnesses have allowed health-care serial killers ...
People also ask
Are health care serial murders a failure of patient safety?
What is healthcare serial killing?
Do healthcare serial killers target the most vulnerable patients?
Is there a barrier to addressing healthcare serial killing?
Is there an algorithm for identifying a healthcare serial killer?
Who are the victims of 'Nightmare' health-care serial killings?
The serial killer experiences a compulsive drive or impulse to kill. Repetition and/or patterns are evident in the murders of seri-al killers. The psychological state of serial killers, whether noticeable or not, is, in some way, abnormal. The crimes of serial killers should be subject to legal and/or forensic proof.
