Contains a discussion of Charles Cullen's real-life crimes, including murder.
Warning: Contains spoilers for The Good Nurse.Netflix’s The Good Nurse skillfully ties up all loose ends in the true crime film’s ending, but Charlie’s confession isn't the complete real story. Based on a true story and Charles Graeber's book The Good Nurse: A True Story of Madness, Medicine, And Murder, The Good Nurse stars Jessica Chastain as ICU nurse Amy Loughren and Eddie Redmayne as Charlie Cullen. The true crime drama details the friendship between Amy and Charlie before patients start to die without explanation, and Amy begins to suspect Charlie is the killer based on the evidence the detectives investigating the case showed her.
While The Good Nurse initially focuses on Amy and Charlie bonding over Amy’s health problems and her need to hide them from the hospital as she waits for her health insurance to cover her, it switches to show the high number of patients suspiciously dying after Charlie’s arrival. The ending of Netflix’s The Good Nurse capitalizes on Chastain’s Amy Loughren’s slow realization of who the person she considered her friend truly was, eventually leading to Amy’s participation in Charlie’s arrest. Here’s The Good Nurse ending explained in detail, the truth behind the fiction, and what some of the drama’s final choices mean.
The Good Nurse's Focus On Hospitals Didn't Tell The Whole Story
As the story unfolds in The Good Nurse, the absence of cooperation from hospitals becomes a focus of the narrative, particularly that of Parkfield Memorial Hospital, which refused the detectives access to the full extent of their internal investigation. The Good Nurse also highlights how the previous hospitals employing Cullen never actually brought him to justice, despite conducting internal investigations and having concerns about his actions. The Good Nurse’s ending shots even reiterate how there were no criminal proceedings against the hospitals that kept employing Cullen, despite the suspicious deaths. The Good Nurse, in telling the true story, points a finger of blame at the system that let Cullen go unpunished.
While The Good Nurse correctly stated that there had been no criminal proceedings against the hospitals that employed Cullen, civil suits followed Cullen’s criminal conviction. According to Graeber's 2013 book, the families of Cullen’s victims and potential victims sued various hospitals where Cullen worked. All the suits in New Jersey were settled out of court, and the files and settlements are sealed. However, it’s known that the hospitals tried to shift the blame to previous hospitals which had not warned them about Cullen. One judge sided with Somerset Medical Center (which inspired Parkfield Memorial Hospital) against Saint Luke’s Hospital, which had informed some of the hospitals where Cullen applied to work, but failed to inform Somerset.
What Happened To Amy Loughren?
Scenes From A Marriage star Jessica Chastain’s poignant performance as Amy Loughren did an excellent job portraying the shocking realization that her colleague and friend Charlie was behind the deaths of their patients. However, while The Good Nurse focuses a lot on Amy’s life as a single mom, the help she receives from Charlie, and her heart condition, it doesn’t say much about Amy’s future after Charlie’s conviction. Indeed, The Good Nurse only details that Loughren lives in Florida with her children and grandchildren and that she got the heart surgery she needed.
However, the impact of being part of Cullen’s investigation was considerate for Loughren, who stopped working as a nurse right after Cullen’s arrest. Loughren decided to follow a different approach with her career following the difficult investigation and arrest of her former friend and colleague, becoming a hypnotherapist, a Reiki master, and more. While the Netflix true crime drama offers glimpses of Loughren’s life after Cullen’s arrest, it doesn’t focus on how the ordeal impacted Loughren, who tried to make sense of what happened by using her blog Amy The Good Nurse to help understand herself more.
Why Charles Confesses & How It's Different From Real Life
The Good Nurse doesn’t distance itself too much from what happened with Cullen’s arrest as it is described in The Good Nurse: A True Story of Madness, Medicine, And Murder. However, while Amy was instrumental in letting the detectives get Cullen’s confession, it’s never explained what makes Cullen decide to confess. Unlike The Good Nurse, in Graeber's 2013 account, the lunch organized by Amy makes more headway as she ends up with a 2-hour chat recorded on tape.
Although the reasons leading to Cullen’s confession are unknown, he entered a plea deal to avoid the death penalty that required his collaboration to identify his victims. Unlike other true crime fictionalizations like Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which sparked a debate on whom to focus on when telling a story inspired by true crime events, The Good Nurse doesn’t examine Cullen’s motives or even on his murders as he commits them, refusing to show his side. However, his collaboration proved instrumental in identifying most of his victims, and despite his confessing to 40 murders, only 29 were confirmed. This shows that while the reasons for his confession are unknown, his continued collaboration was necessary as it was part of his plea deal.
What Happened To Charles Cullen (Is He Still In Prison?)
After entering the plea deal in 2004, Cullen collaborated with the Somerset police to identify his victims. The investigation took the detectives three years, led by Danny Baldwin (Nnamdi Asomugha in The Good Nurse), and still only verified 29 of the 40 victims Cullen confessed to killing, making Cullen’s final victims’ number unknown. Cullen made the news even after his conviction, as he donated a kidney for an acquaintance after a long battle with his victims’ families who didn’t believe his motivations. Cullen is now still an inmate at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, New Jersey.
How The Good Nurse's Events Prompted Laws To Prevent It In The Future
The Cullen case’s aftermath prompted laws to be passed to prevent similar events from happening in the future. The Patient Safety Act was passed in New Jersey in 2004, and it increased the hospitals’ responsibility to report serious adverse events that could be prevented that happened at their facilities to the Department of Health and Senior Services. In 2005, the Enhancement Act was also passed, requiring hospitals to keep limited information about their healthcare professionals, including records about complaints and disciplinary action. Both measures were adopted by 35 other states, however, there’s no penalty or civil liability for hospitals failing to comply, making The Good Nurse particularly necessary as the systemic problems it highlighted are yet to be dealt with effectively.