The Good Nurse

We watched a film called The Good Nurse, which recounts the story of a notorious killer, Charles Cullen, who as a nurse in the American health system managed to kill some 40 people (possibly 400) in a career spanning 14 years of employment by various American hospitals, making him the most successful serial killer in American history.

He was able to get away with his activities for so long because of the disjointed nature of the privatised American health system - when he came under suspicion, his employment was terminated by one hospital, only for him to apply to another hospital and be accepted.

While we have had killers in the NHS, the fact it's a joined up system makes the likelihood of such prolific killing much less likely; however, Shipman killed an estimated 250, but he was his own boss in a GP practice, a system which was changed after the inquiry to multiple doctor GP practices to introduce multiple monitoring of GPs' decisions.