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Officials link fifth patient death to nurse

Hospital Safety Connection, January 13, 2004

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Officials are investigating the death of a fifth hospital or nursing home patient as possibly being connected to a nurse who recently confessed to killing up to 40 patients, the New York Times reports.

The patient in the latest case died at Easton Hospital in Northampton County, PA, while Charles Cullen was employed there from November 1998 to March 1999. Two Rivers Corporation, which owned the hospital at the time, said January 5 that an investigation was ongoing, but would not release the name of the patient or details of the death. Two county investigators said the patient was an elderly man.

The death is the second linked to Cullen's Easton stint, one of 10 facilities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey where he worked during his 16-year career. Police are also investigating the death of a man at an Allentown, PA, nursing home in 1998.

In New Jersey, the Somerset County prosecutor's office says that Cullen confessed to killing as many as 40 terminally ill patients to relieve their suffering. He faces charges of murder and attempted murder in two deaths involving patients at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, NJ. Prosecutors in Pennsylvania have not charged him.

Cullen, 43, told authorities he administered drug overdoses to put patients out of their misery over the last 16 years in nine hospitals and a nursing home in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Investigators are going over patient records to confirm Cullen's claims, but their evidence indicates he may be telling the truth.

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