So let's discuss these "angel of death" type killer nurses

[Eldritch]

The latest case is in Spain, and it's a pretty bad one too:

Spanish nursing home worker admits to killing 11

Gerona, Spain - A 45-year-old nursing home worker in the north-eastern town Spanish town of Olot told a court Tuesday he killed at least 11 people in the home "out of pity" and a hope to "free them from their troubles."

The man's lawyer confirmed the statement, made during a preliminary hearing.

The man has confessed to killing three victims by forcing them to drink household cleaners, another two with an overdose of insulin and the rest with a deadly mixture of medications.

He has also claimed to have killed a twelfth victim, though it remains unclear if that person might have died of natural causes or from the poisoning.

The man came under suspicion after it became clear that a large number of people were dying during his shifts. He was arrested a month ago and confessed to three murders in an initial hearing.

That led to authorities ordering the exhumation of eight more bodies, at which point the worker asked to change his confession and took responsibility for all the deaths.

It is one of the worst series of serial murders in Spanish criminal history.

Deliberate insulin overdoses are a pretty nasty one, from the coroner's pov, since afaIk they're almost impossible to prove. There've been a couple of cases in this country too, recently.

So what exactly drives these people?

[Captain Nemo]

Maybe the "pity" they feel for their victims is in fact the projected pity they feel for themselves, and the growing psychologic incapacity to deal with the constant witnessing of decay, illness and death.

It could be that their psychological structure is unaible to sustain such stress, and that also being otherwise irrational persons, they "break" and rationalise their psychological breakdown into pity, but they actually try to get rid of that stress and inability to deal with it.

If that explanation would be more or less correct, then there should be psychological programs of profiling, monitoring and councelling, aimed at detecting high levels of stress due to contact with death and decay, to help the personal to better deal with it, or to identify those who are not capable of it anymore.

Of course it would be better if some psychological screenig and selection would take place before the start of schooling for jobs with that kind of psychological challenges, including the motives of these peoples to do these jobs and their psychological capacity and resilience in the long term.

Of course, they could just be loonies from the start... But those should be detected too.

[Treffie]

I'll always remember this bitch, she was diagnosed with Münchausen syndrome by proxy.

Beverley Gail Allitt (born 4 October 1968), dubbed by the media the Angel of Death, is an English serial killer who murdered four children and injured nine others while working as a State Enrolled Nurse (SEN), on the children's ward of Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire. Her main method of murder was to inject the child with potassium chloride (to cause cardiac arrest), or with insulin (to induce lethal hypoglycemia).

She was sentenced to life imprisonment at her trial at Nottingham Crown Court in 1993 and is currently being held at Rampton Secure Hospital.