Nurse Charged With Homicide

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  1. Should Radonda Vaught, the nurse who gave a lethal dose of Vecuronium to patient at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, be charged with reckless homicide?

    • 395
      She should not have been charged
    • 128
      She deserved to be charged

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Radonda Vaught, a 35 year old nurse who worked at the University of Medical Center, has been indicted on charges of reckless homicide. Read Nurse Gives Lethal Dose of Vecuronium

Radonda is the nurse who mistakenly gave Vecuronium (a paralytic) to a patient instead of Versed. The patient died.

Specializes in School Nursing.

I'm sure this has been mentioned, but this drug should never have been available for anyone other than a trained anesthesiologist.

Malpractice, yes. Murder???

It blows my mind how punitive our society has become that every mistake is now a crime.

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7 minutes ago, lifelearningrn said:

I'm sure this has been mentioned, but this drug should never have been available for anyone other than a trained anesthesiologist.

Malpractice, yes. Murder???

It blows my mind how punitive our society has become that every mistake is now a crime.

This medication is not used by anesthesiologists only and can be safely administered by other health care providers who are properly trained. I have used it many times. Regardless, she did not properly monitor the patient for the medication she thought she gave. That is her biggest error.

And she isn't being charged with murder.

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Specializes in ACNP-BC, Adult Critical Care, Cardiology.
3 hours ago, lifelearningrn said:

I'm sure this has been mentioned, but this drug should never have been available for anyone other than a trained anesthesiologist.

Malpractice, yes. Murder???

It blows my mind how punitive our society has become that every mistake is now a crime.

How come? There are situations when paralytics are used in the ICU outside of the anesthesiologists’ realm. Patients with severe ARDS are paralyzed to allow lung rest and compliance with low lung volume ventilation. In a Neuro ICU setting, patients with refractory status epilepticus do get paralyzed in extreme situations and Vanderbilt is a quaternary referral center so I would assume that’s not rare there. For that reason, nurses would need access to these drugs if they were ordered.

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Specializes in ACNP-BC, Adult Critical Care, Cardiology.

I wouldn’t call it ICU Nursing 101 but I remember that part of my orientation as a new ICU nurse was to know my drugs and drips. Neuromuscular Blocking Agents or paralytics we’re taught and it was drilled to my head to be vigilant that any of my patients on paralytics must also be sedated with an amnestic agent so they don’t have awareness of their paralysis. This was an institution that was not a Vanderbilt by all means but the CNS that was teaching me at the time left such an impression on my awareness of the safety of this drug.

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@Horseshoe I just watched the videos you posted...

In his passionate defense of the nurse, ZDoggMD said, "she made a mistake." As if she is just like any of us.

But actually, "she made an mistake, and then another... and then another... and then another ... and then another ...and then another ...and then another" If at any point she had stopped making mistakes the patient would not have died.

That is the difference between all of us who "make a mistake", because there is nearly always another safety check that checks us.

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3 minutes ago, mtmkjr said:

@Horseshoe I just watched the videos you posted...

In his passionate defense of the nurse, ZDoggMD said, "she made a mistake." As if she is just like any of us.

But actually, "she made an mistake, and then another... and then another... and then another ... and then another ...and then another ...and then another" If at any point she had stopped making mistakes the patient would not have died.

That is the difference between all of us who "make a mistake", because there is nearly always another safety check that checks us.

Yeah I wonder where the line is. "You made 8 mistakes in this medication administration so your good. But 9 well 9 would be a problem".

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2 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:

Yeah I wonder where the line is. "You made 8 mistakes in this medication administration so your good. But 9 well 9 would be a problem".

If only she had made just 7

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Specializes in ACNP-BC, Adult Critical Care, Cardiology.
16 minutes ago, mtmkjr said:

@Horseshoe I just watched the videos you posted...

In his passionate defense of the nurse, ZDoggMD said, "she made a mistake." As if she is just like any of us.

But actually, "she made an mistake, and then another... and then another... and then another ... and then another ...and then another ...and then another" If at any point she had stopped making mistakes the patient would not have died.

That is the difference between all of us who "make a mistake", because there is nearly always another safety check that checks us.

That’s what makes her case different than the other two cases I know of a medication error that led to criminal charges. In both past cases, there were clear breakdown in practicing as a reasonably prudent nurse but the contributing factors were obvious (poorly legible hand written physician order, nurse working a double the day before). I still invoke inattentional blindness but I’m hoping to hear more about what her distractions were (the orientee asking questions, her obsessing over an upcoming procedure she was being asked to attend to in the ED?).

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32 minutes ago, juan de la cruz said:

That’s what makes her case different than the other two cases I know of a medication error that led to criminal charges. In both past cases, there were clear breakdown in practicing as a reasonably prudent nurse but the contributing factors were obvious (poorly legible hand written physician order, nurse working a double the day before). I still invoke inattentional blindness but I’m hoping to hear more about what her distractions were (the orientee asking questions, her obsessing over an upcoming procedure she was being asked to attend to in the ED?).

We *may* get to hear her side of the story, but it's not likely. If she takes a plea deal, we won't hear it, and if she goes to trial, her lawyer will most likely advise against her testifying. Sometimes defendants insist on testifying, and every once in a while a defense attorney will decide there are some compelling reasons for it, but most usually advise against it.

I, too, would like to hear what, if any, mitigating circumstances there might be in this case. I don't expect to hear enough of them to make me decide that she wasn't grossly negligent, but of course, there is no way to know for sure.

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Specializes in ACNP-BC, Adult Critical Care, Cardiology.
3 minutes ago, Horseshoe said:

We *may* get to hear her side of the story, but it's not likely. If she takes a plea deal, we won't hear it, and if she goes to trial, her lawyer will most likely advise against her testifying. Sometimes defendants insist on testifying, and every once in a while a defense attorney will decide there are some compelling reasons for it, but most usually advise against it.

I, too, would like to hear what, if any, mitigating circumstances there might be in this case. I don't expect to hear enough of them to make me decide that she wasn't grossly negligent, but of course, there is no way to know for sure.

..which in my opinion is one of the downsides of this whole criminal trial circus she now has to face.

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1 hour ago, juan de la cruz said:

..which in my opinion is one of the downsides of this whole criminal trial circus she now has to face.

A circus of her own making I think.

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Specializes in Cardiac, ER.
On 2/5/2019 at 8:16 PM, FolksBtrippin said:

If I had known that this was possible, I would not have become a nurse.

In nursing school we went over a case, where the nurse gave a med by the wrong route, which ended up in the patient's death. Not only did she not get falsely charged with murder, but she kept her license, she kept her job, and became a champion of prevention in the hospital.

I agree, I have been a nurse for over 20 years, our job is inherently dangerous, our decisions and mistakes can kill people. Unless this nurse was impaired, was practicing out of her scope or intentionally did this to cause harm she should not face criminal charges. Physicians have amputated the wrong limb, operated on the wrong pt etc without criminal charges. That is what malpractice is for!

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