The district court in Kassel has sentenced a bogus anesthetist to life imprisonment for three murders. The judges also found the 51-year-old guilty of attempted murder in ten cases and numerous other offenses such as dangerous bodily harm and forgery of documents, as a court spokesman said. The chamber also determined the particular gravity of the guilt.
This largely rules out early release from prison after 15 years. According to the court’s findings, the woman pretended to be an anesthesiologist via forged documents in a hospital in the Schwalm-Eder district, even though she had no training to do so. She worked in various departments at the hospital between November 2015 and August 2018. Until the end of October 2017 she was an assistant doctor in anesthesia there.
In the case of anesthesia, among other things, incorrect dosing of the medication is said to have led to treatment errors in several cases. In three cases, these had led to the death of the patient. The 51-year-old accepted this with approval. According to the indictment, she is said to have given the patients the wrong dose of medication “for selfish motives”.
According to the spokesman, the woman used the so-called last word to express her remorse and regret. However, she did not comment on the allegations made against her during the trial. According to the spokesman, the chamber complied with the prosecutor’s request for a life sentence. The defense, however, had pleaded for a prison sentence of several years.
The 51-year-old was also convicted of numerous other violations of the law, including fraud with documents and misuse of titles and professional titles. According to the court spokesman, the case got rolling when an employee of the Schleswig-Holstein Medical Association expressed doubts about the woman’s certificate.
The accused then resigned from her job in a Schleswig-Holstein clinic – she worked there between September and December 2018 – and reported herself for forging documents. The public prosecutor’s office took this as an opportunity to examine her previous work at the Hessian clinic in more detail, said the spokesman.
In the trial, which began in January last year, a large number of witnesses from the clinic, those close to the accused and patients at the hospital were questioned. The proceedings also included numerous medical reports. The case has been under investigation since January 2019.
