The question often posed when we are confronted with such senseless acts of violence as these, is what causes medical professionals to kill individuals for which they have a fiduciary duty to protect? Are there contributing factors shared among them which predispose them to murder?

When the implicit trust relationship between doctors and nurses and the patients they care for is exploited for their own perverse deviant gain, what can we do? Betrayal by those we believe in chips away at the fundamental core of our society, weakening social mores and values in such a way that may prove beyond repair. It is not enough to sit back and wait for another tragedy to occur. We must strive as a society to stop the violence before it happens by implementing more stringent background checks and encouraging facilities to provide psychological testing for all employees.

In the meantime, doctors and nurses who kill live on even after they are imprisoned or executed — sometimes through exploitation of their crimes by the media, but more importantly, in the memory of the victims who are left behind.