Doctoring the Truth
Welcome to Doctoring the Truth, a podcast where two dedicated audiologists dissect the world of healthcare gone rogue. Explore jaw-dropping stories of medical malfeasance, nefariousness, and shocking breaches of trust. The episodes provide deep dives that latch onto your curiosity and conscience. It's a podcast for truth-seekers craving true crime, clinical insights, and a dash of humor.
Doctoring the Truth
Ep 33-The Original Doctor Death: Harold Shipman
What happens when the person you trust most with your life becomes your executioner? In this chilling episode, we unravel the disturbing case of Dr. Harold Shipman, the most prolific serial killer in modern history, whose medical license became his perfect disguise for murder.
Harold Shipman wasn't lurking in shadows or breaking into homes at night. He was a respected family doctor in the small English town of Hyde, invited into living rooms, offered cups of tea, and trusted implicitly by a community that never imagined their GP was systematically killing his patients. With at least 215 confirmed victims—though the true number may be closer to 250—Shipman's reign of terror lasted over two decades before anyone connected the dots.
Resources:
The Doctor From Hell, by Genoveva Ortiz
Podcast Harold Shipman, on Killer Psyche by Candace De Long
BBC True Crime Documentary: Doctor Death-Harold Shipman (2018)
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Stay safe, and stay suspicious...trust, after all, is a delicate thing!
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Amanda Jenna, did it work? Did you hit the button the same time as me?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know if it's exactly the same time, but it's pretty darn close and I will find out in edits.
Speaker 1:I had the honor of counting down to when we click the button this time.
Speaker 2:Because every time I count I forget to. I'm so excited about counting, I have to put all my energy into that that I forget to actually hit the button. So I forget to. I'm so excited about counting and to put all my energy into that that I forget to actually hit the button. So I was like okay, adhd, I got to focus, I got to focus on the button Amanda, you count?
Speaker 1:And then I felt nervous like, oh, I'm counting, okay, okay, it's a lot of pressure.
Speaker 2:It's a big responsibility, but I knew you were up for the task.
Speaker 1:Thank, you so much I have confidence in you.
Speaker 2:Listen after 33 episodes, one of us has got to figure it out. Yeah, and if not I guess you're really good at editing now, so I'm getting there, although you know a couple episodes ago. Well, we don't need to bring that up.
Speaker 1:That's in the past, we don't need to keep dwelling on the past. Let's just move forward.
Speaker 2:We are moving forward. So we're still in summer. How's it feel?
Speaker 1:Once again sick of it.
Speaker 2:Every morning I get up I'm like do I need a sweater or a jacket? No, I actually need a way to remove layers at the end of the day when it's getting super hot.
Speaker 1:When I don't need a jacket right away in the morning, I just know I'm like.
Speaker 2:You know, normally I put my capri pants and my open-toe shoes like at the back of the closet. Oh no, those babies I'm like. Well, maybe this will be the last week I get to wear these.
Speaker 1:The shoes are like we are sticking around. They're getting an extra workout this year Again. Glad it's not snowing, but get the F out of your hot weather.
Speaker 2:I'm dying for a little bit of cardigan, a little bit of leather. Ankle boots, thigh boots, whatever boot you're into like a boot.
Speaker 1:Like the steering wheel heat, a little seat heat.
Speaker 2:Can't turn that sucker on unless you want to sweat yourself silly.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I still do. It's for the back pain, Don't you do that. It feels nice.
Speaker 2:I do If I have back pain. Yeah, most of the time I'm just sweating. I mean to the point where my car overheated so much I had to take it into the dealership to get a new. I have a Subaru, so they had to call Japan and be like you know what this thing overheated and send me a new computer because it delaminated the computer? Wow, because my car was getting too hot while it was sitting at work waiting for me to get out. Oh yeah, it was crazy. So my whole computer screen you know it's like a little iPad in there it was just like bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep and just like it's one thing to miss hearing your podcast during your commute, which I super missed and on music, but then it would start just like jumping around and glitching and like basically beeping and yelling at me, which was a huge distraction yeah, driving, and now that cars are basically computers, I would have felt very concerned.
Speaker 1:Driving, well, obviously it was a big deal. I was was going to say it was a couple of weeks without your car.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, no, it was a big deal. So anyway, got her back. After a couple of weeks she got a new. She got a new jet, fresh new Japanese computer and your girl's going to start putting those things that I thought only old people did. You know, put those foil things in your dash to keep your car cool. You know those little sunscreens that have the foil on the outside.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Sunscreen. I was picturing you with like an aluminum hat, Not hat, but I was like what?
Speaker 2:I'm going to start wearing a tinfoil hat in case the FBI finds me. They're going to read my brainwaves. We crazy Listen. I think it's a full moon. Patients are crazy, People are crazy.
Speaker 1:Every kid's things keep breaking, so that would track, I guess, with the full moon in my world.
Speaker 2:There was definitely full moon energy today and I feel like, as a monday, it's been pretty much a week already in one day yeah, your life's a little crazier than mine, cray cray well, I'm happy for you that wasn't as crazy as mine well, it never is.
Speaker 1:But thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Sorry for you thanks for rubbing it in that extra little bit.
Speaker 1:You know, I got to help one of your patients today though, so thank you for that.
Speaker 2:I love how collaborative we are between the educational team and the clinical team. It's been really good, really really good. It's amazing to have you in that academia place, so thank you for all you do for kids?
Speaker 1:Thank you, are you verklempt All?
Speaker 2:right, that's enough of that warm fuzzy stuff. Have we got any corrections for last week? Probably not, because it was you.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, wow.
Speaker 1:You know what someone did tell me that they listened to our podcast and I was like, oh my gosh, wow and thanks and they go. Jenna's so funny, she's so good at storytelling.
Speaker 2:And I was like and and what they meant to say was you you asked well, they never said anything about me.
Speaker 1:Oh, which is fine, that's fine. They must have just listened to one episode. Yes, she's great. We're both great. I will laugh at her.
Speaker 2:Oh, well, well, thank you.
Speaker 1:So anyway into the no correction section, someone you know.
Speaker 2:a lot of people think that you are just wonderful oh, and, and I feel the same way and I hear wonderful stuff about you all the time. So, oh, my god, we're so mushy today I know it's like a mutual admiration society right up in here, and you know what listeners we feel that way about you guys too. You're the best listeners on the planet.
Speaker 1:The mushy membership.
Speaker 2:No one ever wanted a alley cats you guys are so complimentary, like I've always heard. Like don't read your comments, don't look at your ratings, because you know you'll just be sad, honest, I mean, and maybe it's just because we're early on in this whole podcast game, but you guys are amazing, thank you. Thank you for being so supportive and so positive. We love you. And, speaking of love, I love Old Glory. I love Old.
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Speaker 2:You know what I may be. A some might say I'm a bit of a dork or a nerd. But when you were going nba, nfl, nhl, I mean, let's face it, I'm not a big sports person, but I was like nal, like national acoustic laboratories she's like nal dsl all the else, um, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for that. Listen, today we're talking about the doctor from hell, uh, so there's gonna be some disclaimers, some triggers, uh, and listen, if you want information about where we obtained I don't know why, all of a sudden I had to go East Coast Um, but remaining sources will be cited in our show notes. So you know, yeah, but honestly, my primary resource was a book called the Doctor from Hell by Genoviva Ortiz, and then some podcasts, including just amazing woman killer psyche, candice DeLong. She has a podcast. I've told you about it. Have you listened to her?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's an FBI behavioralist and a psychiatric nurse who does a podcast on why people do what they do. She's amazing. And then there was the BBC true crime documentary, Dr Death. So the trigger warnings are murder, elder abuse and sexual misconduct. So consider yourselves warned.
Speaker 1:I have one other trigger warning. It's not really a trigger warning, but I'm just going to pre-warn you guys that your girl read a book your girl isn't Jenna, not me and this episode is 17 pages long and she says this isn't going to be long, but I'm just here to warn you. If you have a longer car ride coming up soon, maybe press pause on this one and save it.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, let's see how she does two times the speed listen.
Speaker 1:I'll listen to this one when I have to go back to gerber you're so funny I love that.
Speaker 2:So much listen. I, yes, I may run a book, but here's the thing this guy killed 218 people. So you know, you do you guys, you know what you're in for. It wasn't gonna be short and I feel like I'm the I'm like the two-parter mishap. It's like I can't ever get things condensed, so we're gonna try anyway. Okay, I'm now. I'm looking at this time. Okay, 11 minutes. All right, here we go, okay 11 minutes seven seconds, seconds Go, go.
Speaker 2:All right, let's set the mood. Doctors occupy one of the most sacred positions in our society. We hand them our bodies and in doing so, we hand them our trust. We let them peer into our throats and listen to our hearts. Occasionally, we let them look into our ears. We take their pills, their injections and their advice. And when a doctor tells us something, we believe it, even when it hurts, even when it's fatal.
Speaker 2:Dun, dun dun. What if your doctor wasn't there to save you? What if the person in the white coat with the stethoscope and the calm, professional tone wasn't a guardian of life at all, but its executioner? Life at all, but it's executioner. What if, instead of restoring you to health, I had a mosquito on my computer screen and he made a punctuation? Okay, he's gone. This is going to be a fun episode. What if, instead of restoring you to health, your doctor was quietly and deliberately arranging your death? No, this isn't hypothetical.
Speaker 2:Happened, and it happened not in the shadowy world of illegal back alleys, but in the bright, respectable world of the National Health Service in Britain. His name was Harold Frederick Shipman. His patients called him Dr Shipman. His colleagues thought him brusque but dependable. His neighbors considered him an ordinary family man, but history remembers him as something else entirely the most prolific serial killer in modern history. The official tally stands at 215 confirmed murders, but the real number is likely closer to 250 and possibly even higher. The truth is that we'll never know, because his victims were mothers, grandmothers, neighbors, friends, ordinary people who trusted the man who came into their living rooms with a black doctor's bag. So today, alleycats, we unravel how Harold Shipman, a small-town GP, managed to murder hundreds of people while hiding in plain sight for over two decades. Let's talk about his childhood.
Speaker 2:Harold Frederick Shipman was born on January 14, 1946, in Nottingham. Post-war England was still healing Bomb sites dotted city streets. Rationing had ended only two years earlier and families were learning how to piece together everyday life after years of fear. Nottingham was a working-class city renowned for its coal textiles and association with the legend of Robin Hood. In this landscape of factory smoke and modest terraced houses. Harold entered the world as the second of four children. His father, harold Sr, was a truck driver. He brought home modest wages and left the running of the house to his wife, vera. Vera was strict, disciplined and uncompromising. She had clear expectations and, in her eyes, harold little Freddy as he was called at home could do no wrong. He was her chosen child, her golden boy. From the beginning, harold thrived on that attention. His teachers noted his intelligence, but also his arrogance. He wasn't content simply to answer questions correctly. He needed to demonstrate that he was more intelligent than everyone else in the room. Obnoxious yeah, not endearing.
Speaker 1:It's always that classmate where it's like can you just stay after class to talk about this further, so we can move on with our?
Speaker 2:lives. Can we brown nose? Later it's the student that raises their hand and goes. But you forgot to assign homework. Yeah, yeah, and you're like, circle him. So his classmates found him aloof, cold and detached. He wasn't interested in mucking about or sneaking cigarettes behind a bike shed. He was a serious boy, self-contained and convinced that he was superior. At school he found success on the rugby field and in athletics. He was strong, fast and competitive. But even in sports his aloofness set him apart. He was a team player only in name. He was more interested in being seen as a standout than part of the group. So he was the kind of guy that would hog the ball, I'm sure, for attention to make that goal.
Speaker 2:Beneath the arrogance was an unusual intensity, a watchfulness. And when tragedy struck, that intensity fixed itself on something peculiar. When Harold was 17, vera was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Watching his mother decline was agonizing. But Harold wasn't just grieving, he was studying. I know it's creepy. Right Every day the local doctor visited the house to administer morphine.
Speaker 2:Harold sat by his mother's bed and watched the transformation. One moment Vera was writhing in pain and gasping for breath and then the next day, after an injection of morphine, her face smoothed into calm, Her pain was erased and her peace was restored. This must have left a deep imprint. I mean, most teenagers in his position would have been devastated by their mother's suffering, comforted by the morphine and grateful for the doctor's compassion. But not Harold. He saw something else. He saw the sheer power that came with a syringe else. He saw the sheer power that came with a syringe the ability to end agony, bring relief or bring silence. When Vera died in June 1963, harold lost his greatest champion. But he also gained something else an idea, a belief in the authority of doctors not just to heal but to control life and death itself. That belief would guide him for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2:After Vero's death, harold became even more determined. He excelled in school, secured a place at the University of Leeds Medical School and in 1970, he qualified as a doctor. During his studies, Harold met a shy teenager named Primrose Oxtoby. She was just 17 when they married. Having dated for only two months, she had become pregnant and her strict Methodist parents insisted that Harold do the right thing. Nevertheless, primrose was devoted to him and over the years she gave birth to four children and remained steadfastly loyal to her husband, despite whispers circulating about them. Her loyalty became one of the great mysteries of this story. What did she know and how much did she choose not to see? At Leeds, harold's personality solidified. He was not the charming, empathetic medical student that others aspired to be. He was arrogant, argumentative and determined to assert his authority. He lacked the warmth that puts patients at ease, but he compensated with an aura of confidence and professionalism. He projected certainty, and in medicine certainty is often mistaken for confidence.
Speaker 2:By the early 1970s, shipman had begun practicing general medicine. On the surface, he was the model family doctor young, ambitious and serious. But beneath the surface his weaknesses were already visible. He was detached, he didn't have many friends and he isolated himself from others and he carried with him a secret habit that would almost end his career before it began, secret habit that would almost end his career before it began.
Speaker 2:By 1975, harold had developed a dependency on pethidine, a synthetic opioid used for pain relief. Whether it was stress, curiosity or some twisted echo of the morphine that he'd seen given to his mother, nobody knows. But what we do know is that Harold became addicted. He had easy access. He wrote prescriptions for himself, forging the names of patients, and he dosed in secret, feeding his habit with the very tools entrusted to him as a healer. Eventually, his fraud was discovered. He was caught forging prescriptions. He was arrested and fined 600 pounds and sentenced to attend a drug rehab program. For most people that would have been career-ending. But this is where the system failed spectacularly. Instead of revoking his medical license, the General Medical Council, which is like the AMA here in the United States, allowed him to continue practicing. He was marked as a man who made a mistake. It was a lapse in judgment, but he could be trusted again. The council made a catastrophic. It was a lapse in judgment, but he could be trusted again. The council made a catastrophic misjudgment because Harold had learned a lesson indeed, but it wasn't about humility or accountability. He learned about survival and that the system was forgiving and that the guardians of medicine were not looking too closely and they'd protect their own. So he could make mistakes, even criminal ones, and still walk away into his role as a trusted GP, and this lesson emboldened him.
Speaker 2:In 1977, harold Shipman moved to Hyde, a small industrial town near Manchester. Hyde was precisely the kind of place where a doctor like Harold could hide in plain sight. Harold's hiding in Hyde. The town was working class, tight-knit and bound together by traditions of trust. Neighbors knew one another. Families lived in duplicate rows of terraced houses for generations, people looked after each other and they respected authority figures priests, teachers and doctors among them. Harold settled into a practice and quickly built a reputation for himself. He wasn't worn but he was reliable. He made house calls. He remembered medical histories. He projected confidence. Patients described him as stern, brusque and even rude, but they still respected him, and for many in Hyde, respect mattered more than charm. They didn't want a doctor to joke with them. They wanted a doctor that would take charge of their care, and Harold did precisely that. He became an integral part of the community. He was invited into living rooms, cups of tea were placed in his hands and he was trusted with the intimate details of people's lives. It was the perfect cover.
Speaker 2:From the late 70s into the 1990s, hyde became a town in quiet mourning. At first nothing seemed unusual. People died, elderly patients passed away in their homes. Funerals were part of life. But then patterns began to emerge. Relatives walked into rooms to find their loved ones not in bed but seated in chairs upright, fully dressed. Sometimes their glasses were still on their faces and books in their laps and knitting needles resting idly by their sides. One woman was found with her shoes, neatly laced, as though she'd been preparing to step out, and another was found with her tea, who was still warm steam curling above her cup. It was death presented as tranquility, too neat and too staged. And I should note. I don't think I've mentioned it here, but when Shipman's mother was dying of cancer, she used to sit by the window with a cup of tea in her lap, waiting for him to come home from school every day to greet him and learn about his day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, yeah, that just got even creepier the undertakers noticed the weirdness of all this.
Speaker 2:They whispered about it in pubs and shook their heads. Strange, isn't it? You never find them in bed, it's always in a chair. One muttered, makes our job easier. Shipman practically sets that out for us. They laughed uneasily, but beneath the humor was a sense that something was wrong. Other doctors noticed too. Shipman's death rates were astronomically high.
Speaker 2:A typical GP signed perhaps 23 death certificates a year and shipmen sometimes signed 70. Year after year the numbers piled up. Statistically it was impossible. Imagine a teacher whose entire class fails every year. Imagine a bus driver who crashes three times a month. At some point you stop calling it bad luck and start investigating. But in Hyde people explained it away. Older people die. Doctors sign certificates. Suspicion doesn't flourish. One year GP insists otherwise and Harold, calm and authoritative, always had the last word. The city of Hyde trusted him. They felt themselves lucky to have a doctor so dedicated, so willing to make house calls and so invested in his patients. Even as funerals multiplied, even as obituary columns lengthened, hyde saw him not as a harbinger of death but as a guardian of health. But in reality Hyde had invited death into his living rooms. No-transcript.
Speaker 2:By the mid-1980s Hyde was awash with funerals. At first no one thought much of it. It was a community of older families, and people died of natural causes all the time. But those closest to death undertakers, doctors and families themselves, even a taxi driver began to see the peculiar signature of Shipman's patients. They didn't just die, they died sitting up. I mean imagine walking into your mother's house after her morning phone call, expecting to find her in the kitchen with toast on her plate, only to see her slumped in the armchair in the living room, still dressed, shoes on her feet, spectacles on her nose. At first you think how peaceful it looks like. She nodded off while she was reading the paper. The kettle was still warm and crossed word. Half complete, a dignified end. And that was the story that people told themselves. But once you saw it again and again and again, it became eerie. Therein lay the shield that Harold carried with him. He was a doctor. If anyone else had been found in rooms filled with bodies, suspicion would have ignited like a fire. But when one signing the death certificates was a GP, polite and reliable, no one wanted to believe otherwise. So families didn't question anything. After all, their loved ones were elderly.
Speaker 2:Shipman's reputation in Hyde was complicated. He was beloved because he somehow remembered the details of his patients' lives and their families and had a comforting bedside manner. He would stop to admire the roses. He remembered their grandchildren's names. He took time to get to know the isolated and lonely pensioners. Like no one else had he turned up when he was called. He made house visits without complaint. He was seen walking briskly down the streets of Hyde with his black bag in hand the image of an old-fashioned country doctor. Interestingly, I learned that house calls were common in England until as recently as 2019, when the National Health Service discontinued them due to time and personnel constraints. I mean, to me it sounds old timey, but I mean this was six years ago where they finally said we don't do this anymore. So it was much more common there, much more recently than it was in than it has been in america. So there was that opportunity there for that intimate relationship between hyde and his patients and also lack of witnesses, truth be told right. So he used that trust of him being a doctor as his camouflage.
Speaker 2:The behavior where he garnered trust with his patients was in stark contrast to his behavior in the workplace. He was rude to people like nurses and receptionists that he thought were inferior to him. At best he ignored them, at worst he barked and shouted at them, often degrading and humiliating them. In the book Doctor from Hell, a drug rep talked about her first day on the job and how nervous she was. Shipman reared up into her face, shouting questions and berating her for not having the evidence that he demanded, with the scientific white papers or background to promote the product she was selling. The poor girl ended up in tears and still still Shipman's colleagues put up with him because they believed that he was brilliant and because his patients loved him.
Speaker 2:And also in the post-war era. The population was burgeoning but there weren't enough doctors to go around. So again, shipman was invited into the most intimate places kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms. Families offered him tea, told him their worries and exposed their vulnerabilities. They welcomed him as a figurative authority and once inside, once the door closed, harold had total control. For decades he operated in this manner. The dust mounted, the whispers spread, but no action was taken. It wasn't until one summer morning in 1998 that the mask finally cracked.
Speaker 2:One neighbor said of a victim said I used to see Harold on our street all the time, black, bag in hand, brisk walk, always looking serious, and people said that's a proper doctor, don't waste time with nonsense. And you'd nod along because it was true, he looked the part. And then my friend Elsie died just like that. She'd been fine the week before. I'd had tea with her, for goodness sake, we were talking about the jumble sale. She wasn't sick. And then suddenly she's gone and Harold's there saying well, it was her heart. We all believed him. We thought, well, if Dr Shipman says it's her heart, then that's what it is. It never occurred to us to question him. Why would it? He was the doctor. But when the news came out later, when they said he'd killed her, I felt sick, not just for Elsie but for all of us. We'd all trusted him, we'd invited him into our homes and all the while he was death himself walking our streets.
Speaker 2:One nurse reported. I worked with him once or twice, not closely, thank God, but enough to get a feel he was cold, efficient. Yes, he knew his medicine, no doubt, but there was no warmth, no compassion. Patients were numbers, not people. I remember thinking once when he prescribed morphine for a patient who didn't seem to need it. Well, that's odd. But I didn't say anything. Because who was I. I was a nurse and he was a GP the authority. If I had spoken up I'd been brushed aside. One night we had three patients die. This was unheard of. It still haunts me to this day. It keeps me awake at night knowing I might have seen something and said nothing. But that's the thing about Shipman. He made you doubt yourself. He wore authority like armor and the rest of us stayed quiet.
Speaker 2:An undertaker said quote I can still see their faces, the women, the old men sitting so neatly in their chairs. I remember saying once to my wife strangest thing, all of Dr Shipman's patients die tidy. We laughed, we laughed, but I should have known better. I'd been an undertaker long enough to know death isn't tidy, it's messy. People fall, they suffer, they don't sit upright with their hands folded like they're waiting for a bus. I told myself it was a coincidence. I told myself I was imagining things. And then, years later, when it all came out the murders, the numbers, the truth I realized I'd been staring murder in the face and I looked away. And that guilt never leaves you. I should have said something we all should have. And with that somber note we're going to take a break and visit our welcome to the chart segment where we learn about what's happening in medicine and health care.
Speaker 2:So first centuries, blindness was considered irreversible If you were born with an inherited retinal disease. There was no cure, only adaptation. But in the last decade, gene therapy has begun to change that story. The first breakthrough came with Veretagene neprovic risal, known as Luxturna. Approved in 2017, it treats inherited blindness caused by mutations in the RPE65 gene. Delivered as a one-time injection under the retina, it replaces the faulty gene with a working copy. Patients who once struggled to navigate a dimly lit room suddenly found themselves able to recognize faces, read signs and even drive. It was the first time modern medicine had literally rewritten DNA in the eye to restore vision.
Speaker 2:And the research hasn't stopped there. In 2025, data from the Skyline program for X-linked retinitis pigmentosa showed encouraging long-term results. Patients who received high-dose treatment had a responder rate of approximately 57%, meaning that their eyes showed a clinically significant improvement on microperimetry testing. When I was reading this article, I was like there's got to be a typo, because apparently somebody mentioned decibels. And I'm like, no, that that's an audiology thing. But did you know? And I talked to an optometry friend today, she I was like what? What is this decibel business with eyeballs? Apparently, microparametry testing measures retinal sensitivity in decibels, so the higher the number, the dimmer the light that the retina can detect. So the trial defined responders as eyes that could improve by at least 7 decibels at 5 or more tested points. Put simply, after therapy these patients could see light where they had previously seen nothing. So those improvements remain steady for up to three years.
Speaker 2:Other gene therapies are also moving forward. Trials for LCA5-related Leber congenital amaurosis have shown safety in early signs of restored function, especially in children. Researchers are exploring modifier therapies that not only replace broken genes but also enhance protective factors in the retina, thereby slowing degeneration in conditions like retinitis pigmentosa and Usher syndrome, which includes gradual vision and hearing loss, or progressive, not necessarily gradual. This is medicine at its most hopeful. Blindness, once thought permanent, is becoming reversible, for some. Patients who lived in darkness are now navigating the world with restored vision. For families, it feels less like science and more like a miracle, isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I love that so much.
Speaker 2:I love it too, did you so? You worked in optometry for a while. Do you remember them measuring anything in decibels? I was shocked. I was like this has got to be a typo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I worked in ophthalmology at one of the biggest hospitals in the world and so I supported 47 doctors of all specialties and definitely had RP patients. And I remember there was this one invention thingy for RP patients where they could wear glasses and that was like restoring their vision.
Speaker 2:Sorry, RP is retinitis pigmentosa.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Which is can you give us a little? It's like a degeneration of the retina over time.
Speaker 1:Okay, yes, yeah, so these. I shouldn't even mention the glasses because I don't know enough about them to explain them to you guys, but this patient was blind and with these glasses he could, like, see and navigate around objects, which was awesome. So it sounds like this is doing the same thing, but at like a gene level, so that you wouldn't have to wear the glasses.
Speaker 2:I mean cool, so cool. I know it's not like perfect vision, but can you imagine going from not seeing anything to being able to see how to navigate your world without colliding into something?
Speaker 1:I mean that's huge.
Speaker 2:That's crazy. I love it.
Speaker 1:And think for our ushers patients, like of course their hearing would still be gone but to be able to see and not be blind and deaf, huge I was excited to read that ah, all right well like if, if you're deaf, at least you can still see your world and communicate asl if you want. You know what I mean. You're through a. At least you can still see your world and communicate ASL if you want.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. You're through a cochlear implant. I'm just saying yeah, yeah, well, I mean it doesn't restore your hearing Capital. D deaf or deaf, yeah, depending on whether you.
Speaker 1:You can still communicate. I mean, obviously people that are blind can communicate, but I just feel like that would be so much harder.
Speaker 2:And maybe that's because I'm versed in this. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think it precludes people who are deaf from being able to communicate manually with sign language if they can't see, so this opens up. Yeah, right for communication, which is fantastic.
Speaker 1:I like that yeah, I work with blind and low vision teachers. I'm going to ask them if they heard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's crazy very cool, all right. Well, now that I've lifted you up, we're going to bring you back down. So yeah, we're going to talk about the death of kathleen grundy. Kathleen grundy was not your typical shipment victim At 81, she was elderly, yes, but she was sharp, active and highly respected, a former mayor of Hyde. She lived alone, but she remained busy with community work. She attended luncheons, participated in charity events and continued to tackle her daily crossword. She wasn't frail, she wasn't dying and she had more energy than many of the younger people in the town.
Speaker 2:On June 24, 1998, kathleen was found dead at her home. Shipman had visited her that morning. He told the family that she passed peacefully, signing the death certificate as quote old age end quote as the reason for passing. I mean, it seemed straightforward, if not a little callous, as the reason for passing. I mean it seemed straightforward, if not a little callous. But then came the will. A new will surfaced, typed up, in which Kathleen left her estate nearly 400,000 pounds to her doctor, harold Shipman. Her children were cut out entirely.
Speaker 2:Here's what Shipman failed to reckon with. This is where he went wrong, and thank goodness he finally did, because her daughter, angela Woodruff, was a solicitor. She knew something was wrong. The language on the will was clumsy and riddled with errors, the typing was sloppy and it did not read like her mother and Angela smelled fraud immediately. Not to mention, if her mom had wanted something drafted up, she would have asked her daughter, the solicitor, who would have done it for her right. And they were super close. They talked all the time, every single day, and she'd never mentioned about being ill or needing any help with anything or changing her will, and that would have never happened. They were very close.
Speaker 2:So Angela went to the police, kathleen's body was exhumed, which was the first body in Manchester to have been exhumed at all, and so I mean it was a huge deal. They did it at like three in the morning to like avoid people being able to see and like it was just a huge thing, and they sent tissue into the labs and tests revealed lethal levels of morphine in the tissue. So the forged will, combined with the toxicology, finally exposed Shipman and broke his carefully constructed facade. It had always been arrogance that drove him to kill, the certainty that he was untouchable, narcissist, much dude. But that arrogance, thankfully, was also his downfall, if he hadn't tried to steal money, if he just kept killing quietly, no one would have ever stopped him. But Harold Shipman couldn't resist. He wanted control, and control wasn't just over life and death, it extended to inheritance, and that was the mistake that undid him.
Speaker 2:So the investigation into Harold began, cautiously but quickly gathered speed. Police officers combed through records, interviewed families and began to notice the same chilling patterns. His computer, seized by detectives, contained falsified notes, medical histories that he altered after he killed the patients to make their deaths seem natural. So he'd go and inject morphine in Mrs So-and-so and then come back and say, oh, she's, you know, alter the medical record and say, oh, she's had all these heart issues, blah, blah, blah. So he covered his tracks digitally. But not well enough.
Speaker 2:The fraud was blatant. They got a forensic it person which I think is super cool to go through his computer and his data and they figured out like time and date stamps of when he had entered notes and they were physically after the, the date and time stamp of where the medical examiner had said a patient had died. So he was going in writing, yeah, rewriting history. So more bodies were exhumed, more bodies of former patients were tested and again morphine showed up in multiple toxicology reports, and patients who never needed strong painkillers were found to have lethal doses in their systems. So the police soon realized they weren't dealing with just one or two deaths. They were dealing with an epidemic. Shipman was arrested on September 7, 1998. He was calm, expressionless and denied everything. He claimed that the accusations were ridiculous and insisted that he was being persecuted, that he was a victim of paranoia and grief-stricken families unwilling to accept natural death. But the evidence said otherwise.
Speaker 1:Oh, toxicology reports say otherwise.
Speaker 2:Exactly One victim's daughter said smug face. I wanted to scream. I wanted to jump up and shake him and say why, why her, why any of them? But he never answered. He never gave us that. He just sat there silent as if our grief didn't matter, as if we were nothing. And that's what he stole from us, not just our mothers, not just our fathers. He stole our peace, he stole the chance to understand and we'll never get it back. And, honestly, if you watch the documentary that I listed in the resources, you just want to punch this guy in the throat. He's so arrogant. At one point when he's being questioned, he just turns his back on the investigators and refuses to talk, and he just looks smug and arrogant and just, oh, he's such a jerk. I just want to grab him by the beard and rip it out.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I'm not a violent person, but oh my god, I did a picture of him as a big guy yeah, big bushy beard.
Speaker 2:And just smack, smack, smack and more than that probably.
Speaker 1:Our hand gestures are, I feel like better with our audio. This is an auditory medium.
Speaker 2:So just picture me punching somebody in the throat that deserves it. Okay, so the trial of Harold Shipman opened in October 1999 at Preston Crown Court, which is a grand Victorian building with stone steps worn down by more than a century of footsteps. Inside the courtroom was buzzing with tension. Journalists jostled for space on the benches, notebooks ready, pens poised. Families of the dead sat shoulder to shoulder, clutching photographs and clutching each other. The public gallery was packed and the atmosphere was electric, like the beginning of a play where everyone had dreaded but couldn't look away from. Shipman entered the dock wearing a dark suit, a neat tie and an expressionless smug jug handle of a face, and if anyone expected contrition, they were disappointed. He sat there like he was attending a particularly dull staff meeting, not sitting there as a manic used in the most prolific murderers in british history. His gaze was steady, his lips were tight and his demeanor was arrogant and indifferent I don't know which is worse.
Speaker 2:The prosecution began with the most damning piece of evidence Kathleen Grundy's will, angela Woodruff, kathleen's daughter, was called to the stand and, as a solicitor as we know, she was meticulous, measured and devastating. She told the jury how her mother had been healthy, active and in no way inclined to leave her fortune to her GP. She described receiving the suspicious will, her immediate recognition of the clumsy typing and awkward phrasing and the certainty in her gut that it was a forgery. She spoke with quiet fury, her words slicing through the courtroom, the jury leaned in scribbling and journalists kept their pens flying across paper. In her testimony you could hear not just the grief of a daughter but the controlled anger of a professional dismantling the man who killed her mother, the controlled anger of a professional dismantling the man who killed her mother. Then came the toxicology report lethal morphine in Kathleen Grundy's body, morphine that should never have been there. Morphine was administered by a man who had no medical reason to prescribe it, and from there the prosecution built his case, victim by victim.
Speaker 2:They told the story of each sudden death, each altered medical record, each falsified note on Shipman's computer. They brought in experts who explained how the records had been changed after the deaths backdated, to make the illnesses appear worse than they really were. They showed the jury the patterns elderly women, sudden deaths, house calls and morphine. One undertaker testified about the oddness of the patients who were always found sitting neatly in their chairs. Another witness described how Shipman had discouraged families from requesting autopsies. He would assure them oh, the death is natural, there's no need to prolong the grief. In fact, you should probably cremate your loved one. Families trusted him and he used that trust to keep his crimes hidden In the gallery. Families of victims listened with horror and vindication For years. They suspected something was wrong and lived with nagging doubts, whispers of too sudden or too strange. And now those suspicions were being validated, but at a cost almost too painful to bear.
Speaker 2:The defense tried to poke holes. They suggested the morphine had been administered for pain relief and that elderly patients were simply frail and the prosecution was weaving coincidences into a conspiracy. But the weight of the evidence was crushing. Too many deaths, too many altered records, too many bodies with morphine coursing through veins. That should have been clear. And Shipman himself never testified, never explained. I'm surprised, actually, for a narcissist who would have thought he would have testified. They all seem to think they can pull one over on everybody. But he sat in silence day after day, stone-faced, as if the trial was a trivial inconvenience. Some days he leaned back in his chair with his eyes half-lidded, as if he was bored. Want to punch him. Yet Mm-hmm Family seethed at his composure. Journalists scribbled descriptions of his icy, calm and supercilious manner by January 2000,. After months of testimony, the case was clear, the jury retired to deliberate. And after six days testimony, the case was clear, the jury retired to deliberate and after six days returned to the courtroom Guilty Six days.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I mean, there's a lot of evidence to go through, but I mean I mean I guess.
Speaker 2:but like I, know I've kind of taken six minutes, but guilty, yeah, guilty in all counts 15 murders and one forgery. Guilty in all counts 15 murders and one forgery. The judge sentenced Shipman to life imprisonment, recommending he never be released. A whole life tariff. For once the paperwork was not in his favor and I will say I will add all of the rest of the evidence that had come up. They had to stop at 15 because there was no way they were going to be able to give Shipman a fair trial because of how widespread the knowledge was and the fact that I mean after 15, it's like, well, you're going away forever. But still part of me is like sad that he didn't have to sit through that and hear from every single victim's family. But anyway, shipman still didn't confess, he didn't explain and didn't apologize. The trial established his guilt, but it didn't answer the question that everybody longed to know. The guilty verdict should have been the end of the story, but for most murderers, 15 counts would be enough to cement their legacy of monsters. But, as we know, the trial only scratched the surface. Everyone knew that 15 was just a fraction of the truth. The whispers in Hyde, the undertakers and the suspiciously neat deaths, all of it suggested hundreds more, and so the Shipman Inquiry was born.
Speaker 2:Dame Janet Smith, a senior high court judge with a reputation for meticulousness, and the inquiry, began in 2001 and stretched for years, would eventually produce six reports totaling more than 4,000 patients. It was, in essence, a second trial, not of Shipman himself, but the systems that had allowed him to operate for so long. Dame Janet approached the task with surgical precision. She sifted through more than 270,000 pages of evidence. Medical records were pulled from dusty files and scrutinized line by line. Computers were examined for traces of tampering, families were interviewed, their grief recorded alongside suspicions, and colleagues were asked hard questions about what they'd seen and why they remained silent.
Speaker 2:The inquiry revealed a staggering pattern. At least 215 patients had been murdered, and it was likely more than 250. Some estimates climbed even higher. The victims were overwhelmingly elderly women, but there were men among them too, and not all of them were frail or dying. Many of them were healthy, active, with years of life ahead. What tied them together was trust. Trust in their doctor. Trust that when Harold Shipman brought out his syringe, it was to ease pain, not induce it. Trust that when he signed a certificate, it was honest. That trust was betrayed again and again.
Speaker 2:The inquiry also exposed systemic failures. Doctors operated with mental oversight. Prescriptions for controlled drugs were not closely monitored. Death certificates could be signed without question. Cremation forms required a second doctor's signature, but in practice these were rubber-stamped without scrutiny. These were rubber-stamped without scrutiny Again and again. Shipman exploited these cracks. He altered records on his computer to make deaths look natural. He signed certificates with authority that no one challenged. He persuaded families not to request autopsies. He operated in plain sight, protected by his white coat and by the cultural reverence for doctors and by the reluctance of others to question one of their own.
Speaker 2:Dame Janet Smith's conclusion was blunt. The system failed catastrophically. The National Health Service had placed too much trust in its doctors and that trust had been weaponized. The inquiry recommended sweeping reforms. Death certification was overhauled. Prescribing practices were tightened. Doctors were monitored more closely. Controlled substances like morphine would be tracked with far greater rigor. The medical profession, once insulated by unquestioned authority, would now be subjected to scrutiny.
Speaker 2:However, for families in Hyde, the reforms offered little comfort. They already lost mothers and fathers, grandmothers and friends. No policy change could bring them back. No new regulation could erase the funerals, the grief, the empty chairs and living rooms. For them, the inquiry confirmed what they already suspected the man they trusted had been killing with impunity for decades, and nobody stopped him.
Speaker 2:Imagine attending funeral after funeral only to wonder later was it natural, was it Shipman? Every condolence card written, every hymn sung, every handshake at a gravesite, all of it was cast into doubt. People looked back on the faces they comforted, the tears they shed, and wondered if they had been mourning not just loss but murder. Trust evaporated, patients became suspicious of their doctors, and families began questioning every prescription, every diagnosis. So the relationship between doctor and patient, once sacred, was now contaminated with fear. The grief was communal, heavy and suffocating. Hyde became known not just as an ordinary town, but the town of Shipman. Its name is forever linked to betrayal, and residents carried the stigma of the shame, as though they'd been complicit simply by trusting him.
Speaker 2:For many, the most significant wound wasn't just the loss of loved ones, but the loss of faith Faith in the system, in authority and the very people meant to protect them. And that is what Harold Shipman stole most brutally. Why did he do it, though? That's the question that haunted everyone. He never confessed or explained or offered remorse. He sat through his trial silent and indifferent, and he died in prison without ever answering. Theories abound. Some believe it all goes back to his mother, to the trauma of watching her die and the morphine that soothed her pain. Perhaps Harold was replaying that scene over and over, recreating the trauma of watching her die and the morphine that soothed her pain. Perhaps Harold was replaying that scene over and over, recreating the moment of control, the illusion of compassion. Others see it as pure power, a God complex. He decided who lived, who died and when. He wrote himself in the role of arbiter, wielding the syringe like a scepter.
Speaker 2:For Shipman, death wasn't a tragedy. It was a performance, a decision that only he had the right to make. Still others suggest a darker, sadistic pleasure, the lack of remorse and the clumsy forgery of the will. The sheer scale of the killings suggest not mercy but arrogance. He killed because he could, because nobody stopped him, because he was untouchable, and perhaps that's the most chilling answer of all. He killed because he could, because nobody stopped him, because he was untouchable, and perhaps that's the most chilling answer of all he killed because he could.
Speaker 2:On January 13, 2004, harold Shipman hanged himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison. He'd been working with textiles and had saved enough scraps to create a noose with which to hang himself. He killed himself on the day before his 58th birthday. For the families, it was another act of cruelty. They hoped, however, faintly, that he might one day explain himself, confess or offer some shred of understanding, but instead he denied them that he had controlled the deaths of hundreds of others and in the end he controlled his own. He left behind no note, no confession, no explanation, just silence. His last phone call to his wife, primrose, ended with his words I love you too, don't forget, I will always look after you. The prison service announced his death early that morning.
Speaker 2:Newspapers splashed the news across their front pages. Some called it justice and others called it cowardice. Families expressed anger. He cheated them once more, robbed them of the answers that they craved. Harold Shipman left the world exactly as he'd lived in it on his own terms, indifferent to the devastation that he caused.
Speaker 2:One of the theories as to why he killed himself just days before his 58th birthday was that his wife Primrose, was not able to collect his pension unless he died before the age of 60. So he killed himself so that she would be taken care of. And that kind of ties into his last words to her about how he would take care of her. So, in closing, harold Shipman was not a shadow lurking in an alley. He wasn't a masked intruder breaking through windows. He was a doctor. He came into homes, patted the dog, drank the tea and asked after the family, and then pulled out a syringe that delivered death. He turned the most sacred trust into a weapon. He wore a white coat of authority and behind it concealed his cruelty. He showed us that sometimes the deadliest monsters aren't strangers. They are the very people we invite into our homes.
Speaker 1:Wowzers, First of all I want to applaud you on your timing. I would not be the Sherburn yet.
Speaker 2:that story is crazy there's so much more to it and that it's not even that long ago no it seems old timey.
Speaker 1:I know right, it does seem old timey. I think it's because he took his black bag into the home, so like it feels old timey for here, just because that hasn't been a thing here for so long.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But 2019?.
Speaker 2:2020 was the last date we heard of Well, 2019 was when the National Health put an end to the expectation.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But he died in 2004. But still I mean, yeah, he killed himself in 2004. But yeah, I mean I feel like that's yesterday. It was 21 years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I find it interesting what his motive could have been. I think he was. Obviously it has a tie to his mom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think he saw how she was, but I don't think he was doing it out of like an angel of mercy type thing. I think he was like I am the man, because if you read the book or watch the documentaries, he was really, really into making sure everybody knew his superiority. He would be like trying to outdo everybody and he would never listen to advice from other people. He always knew more. And it seemed to harken back to the fact that his mother, his mother. So Anflin was very classist. They were very like well, you're, you don't go above your station.
Speaker 2:And his mother really wanted to go from lower class to middle class, and so she would say they were in a lower class neighborhood. She wanted better for her son, and so she'd say these people aren't good enough for you. You aren't allowed to associate with these lower class people. You're better than them. And so she kind of raised him that way, and I'm not saying it's her fault, but, like you know, but kind of like set a little root if, if you want a recipe to, yeah, raise a narcissist, that's one way to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure, right, oh yeah, you're better than everybody else. And especially when he's the favorite, he's the unabashedly, unembarrassedly, you know, favorite child of the family, and everybody knew it. Yeah, it's just a thing, like like we're not supposed to play favorites for a reason. So he just assumed that entitlement was like I'm the best. Who the hell are you to say I'm not?
Speaker 1:and then, when he was, so when he felt like these people got close to him, like, yeah, I'll drink your tea, I'll get to know your family secrets and whatever, make you trust me. And no, no, I'm gonna kill you now because you don't know me, i'm'm still better than you.
Speaker 2:Well, he was playing God. He was like, and I can snuff you and I can snuff you Because it doesn't seem to be, I mean, the last one that got him caught he just misjudged the fact that this woman, I mean she used to be mayor and the day before she died she was out, you know, pruning her hedges and her neighbors were like I don't understand. She wasn't frail. We watched her jump off at the bus stop before the bus had even stopped. She jumped off. She leaped off a bus before it had even stopped at the bus stop and just went on her way. You know what I mean. Like she was well fit.
Speaker 1:It feels like he started to get like bored and had to like escalate what he was doing.
Speaker 2:So he's like, okay, yeah, I'm gonna try. Yeah, you got greedy, because most of it didn't seem financially motivated it was. It was purely the control and the power and he I think he got off on playing god well, good riddance.
Speaker 1:That is sad for the rest of the families that they only did. 15 I get why they did only I mean, but even though he would have sat there smug and stone-faced and that would have been infuriating for the families to witness, at least like he would have had to listen to their words impact statements.
Speaker 2:I mean at least they did go on afterwards to do the inquiry. That exposed 215 for sure. Some things that I've read go up more in the 400s. So I mean, like this guy was, I mean it was almost three decades that he was doing this. Well, yeah, and think about all the paper carts. And Hyde was the last town that he was in, but he was in several different locations before then. So he started from the very beginning, leaving a trail behind.
Speaker 1:So I encourage that was another thing. I felt bad for the town of hyde that it had that nickname shipman. Yeah, uh, what was that?
Speaker 2:I don't know that it was the town of shipman like oh, that stinks they'd had another I forget what it was they'd had another murder. Oh, the couple, myra, myra and ian myra and ian whatever, that horrible couple that were killing kids were from hide the toy box. No, the moors killers, myra hindley and ian, I shouldn't look it up, but anyway, anyway, another horrible, horrible story. So they're like come on, guys, we're just trying to be a town, a nice town here. Listen, if you're listening to some of this, ian Brady.
Speaker 1:Ian.
Speaker 2:Brady and Myra Hindley yeah, horrible, horrible, yeah, so to segue into it. You want to feel better? Check out shimmerwood try shimmerwood beverages go amanda go you can.
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Speaker 2:Okay. So today's medical mishap is brought to us by an anonymous listener, friend of the pod, who just sent this link, nothing else. And you know what? The link didn't need anything further. Oh my gosh, let me tell you what the title is Doctor who left patient during operation to have sex with nurse allowed to practice. Oh gosh, and again, this is another man. So you know what? Uk, are you okay? You know you had shipping and we're doing this now, are we okay?
Speaker 1:UK. It's like are we, are we really one to ask if anyone's okay?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's true or not, but like it's okay.
Speaker 1:That's true, that's true. They're like actually America are you? Okay, no, we're not.
Speaker 2:Is anyone okay? I don't think so. So this is from the guardian in manchester. Apparently a doctor I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:A doctor who left a patient midway through an operation to have sex with a nurse is at a very low risk of repeating a serious misconduct, ruled a medical tribunal. Dr Suhail Anjum, 44, and the unnamed nurse were caught in a compromising position by a colleague who walked in on the pair at Tameside Hospital. The consultant and anesthetist had asked another nursing colleague to monitor the male patient who was under general anesthesia so that he could go to the quote bathroom, end quote. Instead, anjum, married father of three, not a naughty went to another operating theater at the hospital in Ashton-under-Lyne, greater Manchester, where bonking took place, and I love this. They try to give this a pseudonym to the nurse and they called her Nurse, like the letter C, but it comes across as Nursie. So bonking took place at Nurssey.
Speaker 2:On 16 september 2023, a medical practitioner's tribunal service hearing was told. Another nurse at the hospital described seeing nursey with her trousers around her knee area and her underwear on display, and that dr anton was tying up the cord of his trousers oh, wow, boy getting hot under the collar up in here. Anjum was absent from the operating room for eight minutes. So never feared, and take long, no harm. Well, thank goodness for that, because I wouldn't be funny, but the matter was reported to management and Anjum was dismissed in February 2024 following an internal investigation. Last week he told a disciplinary tribunal that he wanted to resume his career in the UK and relocate with his family, after they had since moved to his native Pakistan where he worked as a doctor. He promised that there would never be a repeat of the one-off error of judgment. You mean your eight-minute error.
Speaker 1:Yeah, eight minutes of wondering about that.
Speaker 2:Giving evidence. He said it was quite shameful, to say the least. I only have myself to blame. Well, who?
Speaker 1:else would you have to blame. He's just disappointed. Everyone knows it was eight minutes.
Speaker 2:Also, who else would you have to blame? Did someone have a gun to your head? Oh say you're going to the bathroom and then go find nursey in the next room. No, come on, dude. Of course you only have yourself to blame. I let down everybody, not just my patient and myself, but just want to say you also let nursey down down. Yeah, I shouldn't say that, but I let down my colleagues who gave me a lot of respect. Well, they don't now, dude, on Monday. They're like bathroom break my ass.
Speaker 2:I can't believe we're talking about this. I love this so much. So on Monday, the tribunal determined that Angem had put his own interests before those of us. Yeah, he wasn't thinking with his head brain that Angem had put his own interests before those of him. He wasn't thinking with his head brain of the patient and his colleagues, and the incident involving Nurse C had the potential to distract him. You think so. It had the potential to distract him. He may not have been able to give his full attention to the patient's care.
Speaker 1:end quote the tribunal. Could you imagine your anesthesiologist just steps out for eight minutes, or like also you're the one covering the bathroom break, so like the act took eight minutes, but like you had to get to the room and had to like undo your drawers and whatever. So I'll be like did bro fall into the toilet, is he okay? Like do you need to bro fall into the toilet, is he okay?
Speaker 2:Like do you need to go home for the day? The tribunal chair, rebecca Miller, said his actions, while they didn't harm the patient's safety, were significant enough to amount to misconduct. That was serious. However, she was satisfied that Angem was determined not to repeat his past misconduct and considered the risk of repetition to be quote very low. No sanction will be imposed on the doctor and the hearing will reconvene in Manchester on Tuesday to decide whether to issue a warning on his registration. Angem had admitted to engaging in sexual activity with Nurse C and that he knew she was likely to be nearby when he left his patient. Oh wow. He also admitted his actions had the potential to put his patient at risk. What do we think, listeners? Is this somebody that you want in charge of your general anesthesia? Just saying, if there's a body next door, you're kind of screwed, but only for a few minutes, don't worry.
Speaker 1:God, oh Angem, oh bless.
Speaker 2:So, Tara, you're okay. You guys were under the spotlight this week, but maybe next week it'll be about different countries and asaps and yeah, we can't say quite yet, but but it'll be something that we look forward to for sure yeah, I'm sure it will be in America.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, next week we'll cover. We'll cover a case. It'll probably be a doozy, so just get your seatbelt on, but until then, don't miss a beat. Subscribe or following Doctoring the Truth wherever you enjoy your podcasts, for stories that shock, intrigue and educate. Trust, after all, is a delicate thing. You can text us. You can text us directly on our website at doctoringthetruth, at buzzsproutcom. Email us your own story ideas, medical mishaps and comments at doctoringthetruth, at gmail, and be sure to follow us on Instagram at doctoringthetruthpodcast, and Facebook at doctoringthetruth. We are on TikTok at doctoringthetruth and at oddpod. Don't forget to download, rate and review so we can be sure to bring you more content next week. I just want to say good job to Jenna one more time, because that was 17 pages, you guys. So until then, stay safe and stay suspicious. Bye, goodbye. I still wouldn't be to Sherburn. By the way, it's an hour and 12 minutes.
Speaker 2:Oh no, that's so long.
