Patient Homicides and Organisational Silence in Hospitals

Abstract

Looking at the case of German serial killer nurse Michaela R., known as the ‘Wuppertal Angel of Death’, this paper shows that individual-independent structural conditions and informal norms can serve as explanatory factors for organisational silence. Adopting an organisation-focused approach enables the expansion of previous scientific work on patient homicides, which has so far mainly dealt with the perpetrators of such acts, their motives as well as possible typologies.