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

523 members have participated

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Radonda Vaught, a 35 year old nurse who worked at the University of Vanderbilt University 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.

7 minutes ago, Nurse Pompom said:

I agree with you. There is a difference between honest mistake and recklessness.

Agree! I honestly don’t k ow if I can do this til I retire (20 more years). I work in fear!

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20 minutes ago, Dsmcrn said:

I hope you continue to be privileged in your career and never define yourself in such working conditions as many of us do in our states.

You scare me me more than RaDonda because you are so confident this would NEVER happen to you.

You haven't read enough of my responses to make such a rude statement. You also clearly haven't read the CMS report, all of the other threads on this subject or my posting history here. I can confidently say that I would not practice in such an egregiously careless way regardless of the situation I was in but I am very aware that I am not immune to making errors and have which I have also discussed here.

I'm sorry you are working in such poor conditions but it is not my fault you don't feel you can practice safely nor is it my fault that I feel like I can and I would appreciate you dialing it down a bit.

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My last job on a hospital was in 1976. After 20 years of experience, including 5 years on a busy Medical/Surgical unit in NYC I moved to FL and took a position as floor nurse on an orthopedic unit after being promised I would have no more than 4 patients a day and was given 2 days orientation and the next I was instructed to give a patient a bed bath, to be supervised by the head nurse. The patient was a pleasant old lady, one day post-op with a hip replacement. She had an IV with an antibiotic. When I took down her sheet I saw her whole body was covered with a fine, pink rash. I immediately turned off the IV and reported the rash to the head nurse, She exclaimed, "You can't turn off an IV without a Dr's order." and ran in the room to open it. I explained to her that legally we were responsible to stop the IV and notify the doctor. Just then an intern waled in. She told him that because the rash was not on her face, it was just a heat rash from the blankets. He said "OK" and let the order stand. Should I have done more? Looking back, the answer is yes. At that time I looked on her chart to see if she had any living relatives that I could advise to call her attending doctor. None. "I'm the last button on the shirt" she told me.

The next morning she wasn't there. I asked he head nurse about her and was told she went into renal failure, was transferred to ICU and died during the night. I asked her if she knew that that was a result of an adverse reaction to an antibiotic and she repled, "It could have been a lot of things."

I went to the Directress of Nursing and asked to see the incident report to be sure my notes were included. She assured me that it all being handled.

I worked there long enough to realize that 3 out of every 4 post-op patients had infections, that doctors did not wear gloves during dressing changes nor wash their hands when they left the patients even when I begged them to. And I never had less than 8 patients a day with most on individual precautions, post-op or in traction.

This was an accredited hospital with the lowest standards of practice I had ever seen. It's open by the way.

41 minutes ago, Dsmcrn said:

Where do you work that you are able to do your job100%? I truly would like to know. I have nurses in texas 25 years and the last 5 have been horrible. There hasn’t been one day I have been able to do my job by the book. The lack of help, resources and support puts me In Jeopardy daily. I have been pushed out of 3 jobs for speaking up on unsafe practice, leadership falsifying records and policy violations. Some of the orders doctors enter, treatments ordered, procedures ordered puts patients in jeopardy daily. Nurses are pulled in too many directions, caring for too many patients and we only have 2 eyes and 2 hands. I encourage you to familiarize yourself with every aspect of this case. I do not discount the error nor do other nurses the issue is NOTHING is being done to the people who violated regulations who sit behind the desks. Nothing is being done to the Doc who falsified the death certificate and failed to tell the ME this was a medication error. ALOT of people violated the law but only the nurse is being punished. How does that seem ok to you? Every patient in that hospital is still at risk because all those liars and people who cover up errors are still there. The Nurse was the single solitAry only one who was transparent.

I was looking in want ads, considering leaving nursing altogether when I saw an ad for Home Health. It turned out to be an area where I could work at my own speed, and work at my highest level of expertise and standards. I fell in love with nursing again and worked for 30 more years doing what I loved best making a huge difference in many lives.

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20 minutes ago, Dsmcrn said:

I haven’t seen anywhere where there is mention of all the other healthcare workers should receive punishment. If it is somewhere in the comments my apologies. I don’t see it which is why I spoke up.

We have discussed this case extensively here on this forum. There's actually not much that hasn't been said already. There are several different threads on this.

34 minutes ago, Dsmcrn said:

The care of patients is not the goal. The goal is move them in move them out and get the money!

Agreed.

37 minutes ago, Dsmcrn said:

There hasn’t been one day I have been able to do my job by the book.

I think this is generally true as well, and I do think that those who believe they are doing things by the book mostly mean that they still feel comfortable with prudent prioritization; perhaps their area hasn't had the hammer brought down on things like appropriately reassessing patients (for one example). Because as soon as 5 or 10 or 15 of these things come into play at once it is very obvious that it can't all be done at once; when you prudently prioritize, there is something you aren't doing 'by the book.' That, in and of itself, is nothing new - - but vilification of it absolutely is. It used to be considered prudent nursing practice.

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10 minutes ago, Dsmcrn said:

Agree! I honestly don’t k ow if I can do this til I retire (20 more years). I work in fear!

Don't, then. I mean that sincerely.

I think everyone is well within reason to walk right out of acute care without looking back.

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3 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:

You haven't read enough of my responses to make such a rude statement. You also clearly haven't read the CMS report, all of the other threads on this subject or my posting history here. I can confidently say that I would not practice in such an egregiously careless way regardless of the situation I was in but I am very aware that I am not immune to making errors and have which I have also discussed here.

I'm sorry you are working in such poor conditions but it is not my fault you don't feel you can practice safely nor is it my fault that I feel like I can and I would appreciate you dialing it down a bit.

The majority of hospital based nurses are working in poor conditions, hostile work environments, which is why many of us are pushing for ratio laws.

I have done more research on this case than many. Have read the CMS report and the POC.

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I think you missed my last paragraph. I did quit hospital nursing, went into Home Health and never looked back.

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4 minutes ago, JKL33 said:

Don't, then. I mean that sincerely.

I think everyone is well within reason to walk right out of acute care without looking back.

So many good nurses have left bedside care. We are said to be the most trusted profession however we aren’t listened to and our opinions aren’t valued. I most definitely will get out. Just when you are about to bail you have a really good day and are reminded why you do it.

apprexiate your honesty!

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2 minutes ago, lindahartford said:

I think you missed my last paragraph. I did quit hospital nursing, went into Home Health and never looked back.

Great!!

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45 minutes ago, Dsmcrn said:

The majority of hospital based nurses are working in poor conditions, hostile work environments, which is why many of us are pushing for ratio laws.

I don't disagree at all with you on this but I don't think, in this situation, it's a valid excuse. I don't for a second think that the majority of nurses, regardless of how busy they are, would practice nursing in such a sloppy fashion and I certainly hope you don't and won't assume that you do. Have you read the latest to come out about the case? RV admits to being distracted by an unrelated conversation. How is that the fault of anybody but her? I've never considered the override a big deal because we all do it otherwise nothing would ever get done. It was her other actions that put the nail in her coffin as far as I'm concerned. I also happen to think that the other nurse bears some responsibility but that's a conversation for another thread.

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18 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:

I don't disagree at all with you on this but I don't think, in this situation, it's a valid excuse. I don't for a second think that the majority of nurses, regardless of how busy they are, would practice nursing in such a sloppy fashion and I certainly hope you don't and won't assume that you do. Have you read the latest to come out about the case? RV admits to being distracted by an unrelated conversation. How is that the fault of anybody but her? I've never considered the override a big deal because we all do it otherwise nothing would ever get done. It was her other actions that put the nail in her coffin as far as I'm concerned. I also happen to think that the other nurse bears some responsibility but that's a conversation for another thread.

She admitted to this all along. It’s in the original CMS report. This isn’t new.

Mom always being interrupted when pulling meds. We work with distractions. This is as common as the override button use. Truly

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4 minutes ago, Dsmcrn said:

She admitted to this all along. It’s in the original CMS report. This isn’t new.

Mom always being interrupted when pulling meds. We work with distractions. This is as common as the override button use. Truly

I get what you're saying but that is not a valid excuse and it does not explain the remainder of her actions.

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