The Nurse (2023): the true story of Christina Aistrup Hansen

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After The Good Nurse, released in 2022, Netflix returned in April 2023 with another case of a hospital nurse who killed some patients. And it’s again a true story: The Nurse (2023) is a Danish production based on the book of the same name published in 2021 by Kristian Corfixen, and it describes the crimes committed by the Danish night nurse Christina Aistrup Hansen in 2012 and 2015. Let’s find out what happened.

You can watch the official trailer for The Nurse (2023) here on Youtube.

The Nurse (2023): the true story of Christina Aistrup Hansen

The Danish TV series The Nurse, released on Netflix in 2023, is based on the true story of Christina Aistrup Hansen, a night nurse sentenced in 2017 for murder. There aren’t many sources in English about what happened, but this article in Swedish explains in detail what happened. Below we will tell you the actual events behind the series.

Christina Aistrup Hansen was arrested in 2016 for the death of three patients at the Nykøbing Falster Hospital in Denmark. The patients were a 72-year-old man who died in 2012 and two more patients, an 86-year-old woman and a 66-year-old man, who died on the same day, February 28, 2015. In all cases, high dosages of morphine and diazepam (better known as Valium) were found in their bodies. And the night nurse working in the hospital department was always Christina Aistrup Hansen.

One of her colleagues, Pernille Larsen (successfully portrayed in the TV series The Nurse), started having suspicions. With the help of her boyfriend, Dr. Niels Lunden, who worked in the same department, they alerted the police. Christina Aistrup Hansen was arrested shortly after.

The trial became one of the most significant cases covered by the Danish media. The nurse became famous in Denmark as the “Devil of Death” (“dødsdjævel” in Danish, as you can see in this article). It was proven that she was the one injecting morphine and diazepam in those patients. She was sentenced to life in prison in 2016 for three murders and one attempted murder (another patient survived that day on February 28, 2015, always because of the substances injected by Christina). However, in 2017, the sentence turned to 12 years, and the charge was “attempted murder”: the reason is that it was impossible to prove that the morphine and diazepam were the direct cause of death.

As of today, 2023, Christina Aistrup Hansen is still serving her sentence in a Danish prison. She was diagnosed with Histrionic personality disorder, a personality disorder characterized by excessive attention-seeking behaviors. According to this diagnosis, she was drugging the patients to save them promptly afterward. Except that in three cases out of four, she couldn’t.

While writing the book The Nurse inspired by her true story, Kristian Corfixen interviewed Christina Aistrup Hansen in prison. She declared, “Many in here talk about one day reaching a point where you come to terms with your judgment. But I haven’t gotten there yet.” She also confirmed that she still feels a lot of anger and frustration and tried to take her own life once.

Her sentence will end in 2028. After that, she will be again a free woman, although she won’t be able to work as a nurse again.

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