Nurses Who Kill

The reconstructions segments for the episodes about American killers were clearly not well-researched. At one point they have their actress wearing a British nurses' uniform instead of scrubs like a nurse would in the US, and some 'Texans' have accents that sound much more like they're from Georgia. It really felt like they were trying to stretch out to fill a time slot too, repeating bits of interview footage over & over.

What do Colin Norris, Daniela Poggiali, and Ben Geen have in common? They are almost certainly innocent, according to many scholars and experts who have studied these cases closely. Miscarriages of justice do happen. They happen rather often (a) in the UK, (b) in serial killer nurse cases. These cases are fortunately very rare, but also very challenging. Courts must first decide whether or not there actually were any murders at all, and only if so, who was the perpetrator. Typically some surprising incident combined with pre-existing gossip about a nurse who stands our in the crowd, in a hospital which actually is failing due to bad management, understaffing etc, triggers a witch hunt and a witch trial. Forensic research is not done by police investigators buy by hospital specialists and managers, who give the information to police and to the courts, and who are needed to interpret that information. It's a recipe for disaster. Daniela Poggiali (Italy) has been acquitted after a retrial. The toxicological and statistical evidence against her was pure garbage.

While very interesting and informative, the series suffers from not enough footage. The same scenes - even dramatic reconstructions - are being repeated five and more times throughout the episode, with some scenes taken from previous episodes. As a result - each episode feels like dragging on and if we cut out all repetitions, it would shrink to 15 minutes.

They talk about how nurses should and shouldn't be but they sound like none of them has ever met a nurse. Most of the "specialists" they speak to their specialties have nothing to do with the subjects they're speaking about.

I'm thankful for this, so one can ask the important questions before being treated.