Nerve, Knowledge, and Normality in Healthcare Serial Killing

This talk will focus on how easy it can be for healthcare practitioners to move from saving lives to doing away with them. The focus will be on Dr Harold Shipman (1946-2004) who killed hundreds of his patients over a 28-year period. Wherever he worked in the NHS – casualty, hospital wards and general practice – Shipman could kill people without anyone apparently noticing. Causing death in the course of treatment, with the intention of deliberately killing people, is known as ‘clinicide’. How common is clinicide? Why does it happen? How can it be incorporated into normal healthcare ‘routines’? And how can it be detected? This talk considers what can be learnt from healthcare serial killers from home and abroad, from fiction and fact.

Join Brian Hurwitz for this special talk on Halloween. Brian Hurwitz is D’Oyly Carte Professor of Medicine and the Arts in the Department of English at King's College London. He is a medical practitioner affiliated to the Division of Health and Social Care Research, King’s College London, directs the Centre for the Humanities and Health and is a member of the Steering Advisory Board of the Centre for Life-Writing Research at King’s.

Doors will open at 6:30 PM.