I just finished part one of Charles Graeber's book, "The Good Nurse," and just had to talk about it. The good nurse in the title was Charles Cullen, and it's a true tale about murder by medicine. It's the stuff of nightmares.
Cullen was the nurse the media called the "angel of death" after his murders came to light. Graeber writes a fascinating account of this killer, and it's a scary story. Cullen's M.O. went like this. He would punch his own nurse's code into the Pyxis MedStation along with a request for a particular drug for some patient; the drawer would open; he would steal a different drug; then cancel the order and close the drawer.
He would inject a massive dose of some life saving drug like insulin or digozin into a patient's IV bag, then go about his other nursing duties. But too much of a good thing can kill a person, and if the person was sick already, the patient's death might not raise much suspicion. Often when the patient coded and Cullen was around, he was a hero. Cullen was first on the scene trying to revive the person. And miraculously, Cullen could come up with the antidote. What a brilliant nurse he was. But it was a sham, and too many times the patient died.
Cullen was a cold blooded killer, and he used his medical skills to do it in secret. That was part one of "The Good Nurse." It was years before justice caught up with him, and part two deals with the ultimate investigations that led to his conviction. So there's more to the story than you are reading here.
For a taste of the story an excerpt from the book is reproduced here.
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3:06 PM 6/3/2019
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