Charles Cullen is every hospital’s nightmare: A deranged nurse who methodically murders patients by giving them hard-to-detect overdoses of medications.
Cullen, who was arrested in 2004 after a 16-year crime spree made considerably easier because a severe nursing shortage enabled him to go undetected as he moved from hospital to hospital, told authorities that he murdered as many as 45 patients at hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
As a result of Cullen cooperating with authorities in a plea bargain that will keep him behind bars for life, hospital procedures were tightened with his input and the New Jersey legislature passed the Nurse Cullen Act. This requires nurses to be fingerprinted and established a system whereby the New Jersey Board of Nursing is notified if a nurse has any kind of brush with the law, no matter how minor.
The Nurse Cullen Act would seem to be a good thing on its face, but it is a safe bet that New Jersey hospitals have killed many more patients than Charles Cullen did as its health-care system has imploded.
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