How to Spot a Healthcare Serial Killer

What does a healthcare serial killer look like—and would the nurses working beside one recognize the warning signs?

In this episode of Nurses Are Terrible People Too, a group of experienced nurses takes a closer look at healthcare killer profiling, discussing the traits, behaviors, motives, and red flags researchers have linked to healthcare serial killers, sometimes called “Angels of Death.” We compare the research with what these warning signs actually look like from a nurse’s perspective.

We also explore why hospitals can provide the perfect camouflage for a killer, how institutional failures can allow suspicious healthcare workers to slip through the cracks, and whether some offenders may have been deliberately harming patients long before anyone realized they were killing them.

Then, because we can’t leave you suspicious of everyone wearing scrubs, we Restore Your Faith in Nurses with Ann Burgess—the pioneering nurse researcher whose work with the FBI helped shape modern criminal profiling and later inspired the character Dr. Wendy Carr in Mindhunter. Turns out nurses aren’t just interesting people to profile—one helped pioneer profiling itself.

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Pub Med: Health care serial murder

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7571648/

NANB: Fact Sheet: Health Care Serial Killers

https://nanb.nb.ca/media/documents/NANB-FactSheet-HealthCareSerialKillers-Aug-20-E.pdf

The Guardian: Study identifies key traits and methods of serial killer nurses

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/22/study-identified-key-traits-serial-killer-nurses

Nursing Standard :Why nurses kill

https://journals.rcni.com/nursing-standard/why-nurses-kill-ns.23.9.24.s23

CBC News Toronto: Health professionals who kill multiple patients share common profile, expert says

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/health-professionals-who-kill-multiple-patients-share-common-profile-expert-says-1.3822922

Nursing Standard: How to spot a nurse killer

https://journals.rcni.com/nursing-standard/how-to-spot-a-nurse-killer-ns.29.21.20.s26

Profiling Angels of Death: Nurses that kill

https://criminalprofiling.com/profiling-angels-of-death-nurses-that-kill/

Caring to Death: A Discursive Analysis of Nurses who Murder Patients https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268372982_Caring_to_Death_A_Discursive_Analysis_of_Nurses_who_Murder_Patients

The Guardian: Study identifies key traits and methods of serial killer nurses

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/22/study-identified-key-traits-serial-killer-nurses