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.

10 minutes ago, Emergent said:

Well, there's another failure. I think it's evident that the hospital tried to cover this up.

But, eventually it did come out. This gal only got suspended from her new job when she was arrested.

They are required to report a death directly due to a medical error.

Apparently...they did not...you'll have to read down on this article. The Board of Directors will probably be terminating a ton of people responsible for it as well. They won't have a choice.

https://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20181128/NEWS/181129938

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Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
18 minutes ago, Emergent said:

Which is a failure of the current system of slow BON responses to nurses culpable in sentinal events.

When a police officer is involved in any on the job shooting in the line of duty, they pull him from active duty pending investigation.

Why should a potentially incompetent nurse be allowed to work until the BON gets around to the case months later?

That's like the Catholic Church moving predatory priests to a different parish. That's a poor practice.

Do we even know if reported her to the BON when they terminated her?

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6 minutes ago, LilPeanut said:

The problem with that assumptionargument is that she had no idea whether it was ordered stat either. She never looked at a MAR. She took a verbal order for a controlled substance from another RN without any sort of checking.

I've never worked somewhere where we were expected to regularly override meds that were not emergent.

I think it is a plainly clear and common idea that a nurse might have every reason to believe a medication was entered as STAT when a patient is already in a procedure area waiting for the medication.

If you would like to talk about whether it was literally emergent or not, I agree it clearly wasn't. No way. And I can't defend her actions.

Just the same, the topic of whether it was actually emergent or not gets around to my assertion that fake emergencies (or imposed time pressures) have become a serious problem in acute care.

I mean, that is this situation. We have several people up in arms about a downgraded ICU patient, unattended and off monitors, who needs something for anxiety right away in order to obtain an utterly non-urgent PET scan...

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Specializes in ACNP-BC, Adult Critical Care, Cardiology.
Just now, TriciaJ said:

I agree with this 100%. However our employers do keep adding on the stress and putting nurses between a rock and a hard place. Nursing schools really need to add courses on assertiveness and standing one's ground for patient safety. They talk a good game about being patient advocates; are they teaching courses that specifically address how to do this?

There's been studies that explored nursing students' understanding of how interruptions can result in an error during medication administration. I think the study by one Australian university as linked below are good ideas but requires buy in from administrators who will hire the future nurses and create a culture of safety within their facilities.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28445621

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26216062

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Specializes in ACNP-BC, Adult Critical Care, Cardiology.
46 minutes ago, Susie2310 said:

You can keep downplaying errors in care as much as you like. Perhaps if your family member had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke as a result of being overdosed with anticoagulants, or went into cardiac arrest or heart failure due to delays in receiving rate control medications, you would feel differently.

I'm sorry but how are you accusing me of downplaying any of these errors? Please do not make assumptions about my posts and start an argument that is personal to me and has nothing to do with this discussion. What if something worse were to happen to my family member? I would want an investigation and try to find answers before I would pursue a civil lawsuit. I've already made my point about how I don't agree with criminal prosecution of medication errors.

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30 minutes ago, TriciaJ said:

Nursing schools really need to add courses on assertiveness and standing one's ground for patient safety. They talk a good game about being patient advocates; are they teaching courses that specifically address how to do this?

Too bad they're stuck on the same boogeyman they've always been focused on: The Evil Physician. They act like there's nothing to watch out for on behalf of the patient except what those uncaring, greedy doctors might do. I think they missed the memo that, for the most part, doctors aren't the ones running the show now...

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2 hours ago, mtnNurse. said:

I agree, and I also think that licensed health professionals have a right to be protected from criminal charges when a facility fails to provide safe working environments, safe workloads, and safe work expectations. If the facility had provided all these things that would promote good nursing care, would this nurse have been in helper-nurse role or was she too inexperienced for that? Would there have been a med scanner in radiology (yes, we will never know if she would have chosen to use that scanner had there been one...but just maybe)? Would the dead patient never have been subject to the careless nurse because the patient's primary nurse would not have been overloaded to the extent that she couldn't attend to the patient while in radiology? We could think of lots more of such questions.

So you feel the hospital should test every staff person to make sure they understand basic nursing concepts? Like the 5 rights. Like monitoring patients for adverse reactions when giving IV push meds? Any nursing student knows these things. What if she paid lip-service to them and did her own thing when nobody was watching. There are lots of people who put on a good front but are very different behind closed doors. Perhaps this is just the first time she got caught. Given the sheer number of horrible decisions she made in this single situation it’s a good bet she’s been playing it fast and loose for a long time. Is the hospital supposed to be psychic?

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Specializes in NICU/Neonatal transport.
18 minutes ago, TriciaJ said:

Do we even know if Vandy reported her to the BON when they terminated her?

It would not appear they did. But I do not know if anyone knows for sure.

19 minutes ago, Jory said:

They are required to report a death directly due to a medical error.

Apparently...they did not...you'll have to read down on this article. The Board of Directors will probably be terminating a ton of people responsible for it as well. They won't have a choice.

https://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20181128/NEWS/181129938

Though that was a single physician's decision to cover up for the nurse. No other administrator's were on the phone with the ME - it was one physician who was hesitant to perhaps "throw a nurse under the bus" by saying the death was from her error.

17 minutes ago, JKL33 said:

I think it is a plainly clear and common idea that a nurse might have every reason to believe a medication was entered as STAT when a patient is already in a procedure area waiting for the medication.

If you would like to talk about whether it was literally emergent or not, I agree it clearly wasn't. No way. And I can't defend her actions.

Just the same, the topic of whether it was actually emergent or not gets around to my assertion that fake emergencies (or imposed time pressures) have become a serious problem in acute care.

I mean, that is this situation. We have several people up in arms about a downgraded ICU patient, unattended and off monitors, who needs something for anxiety right away in order to obtain an utterly non-urgent PET scan...

I'll have to agree to disagree on that. I honestly cannot even conceive of overriding a med in a non code situation that I haven't seen an order for, especially a controlled substance. I think the fact that she took a verbal order for a controlled substance from a nurse without ever verifying it is just as much of an issue as anything else.

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12 minutes ago, LilPeanut said:

I'll have to agree to disagree on that. I honestly cannot even conceive of overriding a med in a non code situation that I haven't seen an order for, especially a controlled substance. I think the fact that she took a verbal order for a controlled substance from a nurse without ever verifying it is just as much of an issue as anything else.

I hadn't noted anywhere that it said whether she looked at the order at any point or not. That issue is not addressed specifically unless I overlooked it; it kind of appears to me that they didn't ask her that specific question. But if she did start this whole process without looking at the order, it's another thing I can't fathom.

I am familiar with different utilizations of the override function - not based on my own decision-making but because of the way its use has evolved over time.

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Let's assume did not report her to the BON. If that is the case, I wonder if the BON can launch an investigation based on the charges and CMS report? Can CMS report nurses?

If the BON actually IS investigating, but is taking this long to revoke her license, that is a big problem. If our own licensing board can't remove an unsafe nurse from patient care pending a fair investigation, I'm more inclined to think the criminal charges are necessary.

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

Let's assume Vandy did not report her to the BON. If that is the case, I wonder if the BON can launch an investigation based on the charges and CMS report? Can CMS report nurses?

My understanding is that BON's don't investigate without a formal complaint. If she does get convicted of the crime she's charged with, the BON responds accordingly based on how their rules are written which may lead to revocation of her license. In the previous two cases of criminal charges against nurses who committed medication errors, the outcomes were a combination of plea bargains lowering the charges, acquittal by a jury, and expunging of the criminal record. The BON did not revoke any licenses.

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Specializes in NICU/Neonatal transport.
20 minutes ago, JKL33 said:

I hadn't noted anywhere that it said whether she looked at the order at any point or not. That issue is not addressed specifically unless I overlooked it; it kind of appears to me that they didn't ask her that specific question. But if she did start this whole process without looking at the order, it's another thing I can't fathom.

I am familiar with different utilizations of the override function - not based on my own decision-making but because of the way its use has evolved over time.

I feel it would be very pertinent to the report - because had she looked at the MAR, it would have been listed under midazolam, not versed, and as the pharmacist had verified it in the MAR, there would be even more reason to believe it was in the ADC under the patient profile and not needing to be overridden.

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