Richard Angelo and the Ethics of Self-Delusion
THE ‘ANGEL OF DEATH’
Abstract
Charge nurse Richard Angelo was responsible for the deaths of at least 10 patients at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip, New York, between 1986 and 1989. A former Eagle Scout and volunteer fireman, Angelo sought to create situations in which he would be seen to revive patients he had brought to the brink of death by injecting them with lethal paralytic drugs. As such, Angelo violated his professional ethics on multiple levels and called into question the very nature of the patient-nurse compact. The Angelo case, and others like it, elicited a reassessment ...
