The Terrifying True Story Behind Netflix's The Nurse (2023) Miniseries (2024)

The Nurse (2023) is a Netflix original miniseries that follows the chilling true story of Christina Aistrup Hansen, a nurse in Denmark who was accused of multiple horrific crimes. The series premiered on Netflix on April 27, 2023, with all four episodes of the show dropping at once. In the show, Pernille Kurzmann (Fanny Louise Bernth) is a recently graduated nurse who comes to the Nykøbing Falster Hospital in Denmark in 2014 where she meets Hansen (Josephine Park), a veteran nurse of the hospital. At first, Kurzmann enjoys working alongside the seemingly capable Hansen but soon, Kurzmann begins to suspect her partner may be harboring a dark secret.

What happens next is almost too unbelievable to be true. Kurzmann and the other doctors and the nurses in the ER begin to piece together that Hansen is responsible for harming the patients that she claimed to be resuscitating, even killing some. It's a harrowing, ominous, and quietly acted series that uses the real story as a springboard to tell the dramatic tale. For the most part, the series adheres to the facts, but there are some parts of The Nurse that are changed from the true story. While The Nurse tells much of what happened at that hospital, the real story is fascinating on its own.

The Nurse Is Based On A True Story

The Nurse (2023) is based on real events that happened at a Denmark hospital in the 2010s. Much of the story is dramatized from a 2022 investigative book, The Nurse: The True Story Behind One of Scandinavia’s Most Notorious Criminal Trials by Kristian Corfixen. The book covers the story of Hansen, using interviews of those present during the events that took place, along with the court case and the aftermath. The book quickly grew in popularity as Hansen's crimes were revealed and Netflix announced the dramatic adaptation of the series in March 2023 (via Netflix).

Christina Aistrup Hansen And Pernille Kurzmann Worked Night Shifts

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When Kurzmann first arrived at Nykøbing Falster Hospital, she immediately started working the graveyard shift alongside Hansen. Working that shift, Kurzmann and Hansen were involved in a surprising number of critical emergencies, with patients' conditions deteriorating despite showing no previous signs of immediate waning health. At first, Kurzmann was impressed with Hansen's almost preternatural ability to be on the scene during an emergency and was amazed at her calm manner. However, the young nurse soon grew suspicious of Hansen's heroics and began to wonder why so many of her healthy patients would suddenly nose-dive.

Hansen Was Well Liked By Her Coworkers

One of the reasons it took so long for anyone to speak up about Hansen was that she was generally well-liked by the rest of the staff at the hospital, (via Nordic Watchlist). As far as most of the other residents were concerned, Hansen was kind, polite, intelligent, and clearly a talented nurse with a track record of successfully saving dying patients. Her charm and abilities were enough to distract from the fact that many of her patients had sudden emergencies or even died overnight.

Other Doctors And Nurses Had Their Suspicions About Hansen

Despite Hansen being well-liked by most of the doctors and nurses at the hospital, there were many who had been suspicious of Hansen's "successes" over the course of her career. Corfixen's book is also an indictment of the system of trust and obscuration that often surrounds hospitals and caretakers. It was this culture that allowed Hansen to operate for such a long time despite the fact that many of her coworkers thought it at best odd and at worst concerning that her patients' health would take such a turn for the worst. It took someone new like Kurzmann to understand that what she was seeing was highly unusual.

Hansen Used A Combination Of Morphine And Diazepam On Her Patients

What was really happening in that Denmark hospital was something sinister. Hansen had been administering lethal doses of morphine and diazepam to her patients. These drugs are typically administered in hospitals, morphine for pain relief, and diazepam for reducing anxiety and muscle spasms, among other issues (via MedlinePlus). They are completely normal drugs to be in a hospital room, but they can also be dangerous and result in respiratory failure and comas at the wrong dosage. It was easy for Hansen to overdose her patients and she would then return to their rooms after injecting them to heroically save the day.

Inevitably, Hansen would fill her patients with so much of the dangerous drugs that she would be unable to save them, even knowing that they were about to overdose. Hansen was clearly playing with her patients' lives, expecting to be able to bring them back from near death. However, plenty of times her lethal doses were just that, lethal, and patients who previously were not at risk of death passed away.

During Hansen's Trial, The Prosecution Said Her Crimes Were Linked To A Histrionic Personality Disorder

In 2015, police received a call from Kurzmann where she outlined her suspicions of Hansen. Other doctors and nurses were quick to corroborate Kurzmann's story and Hansen quickly found herself accused of murder among other charges. Hansen faced life in prison for her crimes, which included the murder of Viggo Holm Petersen, Anna Lise Poulsen, and Arne Herskov, and the attempted murder of Maggi Margrethe Rasmussen. The prosecution argued that Hansen was someone with "histrionic personality disorder", a disorder that the American Psychiatric Association defines as a borderline personality disorder.

The disorder is supposedly characterized by traits including "superficiality", "egocentricity" and "persistent search for excitement in existence" (via Manchester Evening News). Prosecutor Michael Boelsen argued this, which resulted in a guilty verdict. However, Hansen's sentence was eventually commuted to 12 years as it could not be ruled out that other complications contributed to her patients' deaths.

Where Are Christina Aistrup Hansen And Pernille Kurzmann Now?

Hansen is set to be released from prison in 2028 but has been more than happy to share her story from her cell. Corfixen was able to interview Hansen for her book and the author explains how the nurse still maintains her innocence and is unwilling to accept the judgment passed on to her. Many of the ER nurses at Nykøbing Falster Hospital appear to have moved on to different jobs, but Kurzmann remains. The nurse responsible for uncovering Hansen's crimes remains at Nykøbing Falster Hospital now goes by Pernille Kurzmann Lundén since marrying her boyfriend Nils Lunden, played by Alec Newman in The Nurse (2023).