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.

No she should not have been charged. There should have been a better checking system in place. Its unfortunate but it happens. The hospital should review its own best practices. They are making an example of her . Blame the RN Its too bad all around.So sad. It's a scary profession now.

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On 2/9/2019 at 8:53 AM, juan de la cruz said:

Right. That's why I said in a previous post how outright inconceivable her actions were. It was one misstep after another, and another...I'd have so many questions to ask her if I were investigating the case but all her answers won't matter because it seems that she honestly thought she gave the patient Versed. We all agree that she didn't show up to Radiology with the intention to kill this patient. To me there is really no defending her...a momentary loss of common sense or reasoning is not even a thing. She practiced dangerously and what bothers me is that she took a job at another ICU in another hospital after she was fired. I also wonder why the Tennessee BON haven't conducted their own investigation. Having said that, I am on the camp that believes she should lose her RN license but not be criminally charged.

Texas Board did a 9 month investigation and found no reason to remove or restrict her license

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3 minutes ago, Dsmcrn said:

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

Be that as it may, this case does present as a pyxis distraction that was entirely avoidable; even more so than some others. Innumerable nurses are working with orientees or students every day. Very simply, you stop moving your own mouth when you're pulling meds, and if your student/orientee asks about something, you say, "give me a minute here; I'll tell you more on the way to the ED...." or some such thing.

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4 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:

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

Didn’t say it was an excuse. I was just stating the facts

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5 minutes ago, Dsmcrn said:

Texas Board did a 9 month investigation and found no reason to remove or restrict her license

They need to be investigated too.

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5 minutes ago, Dsmcrn said:

Didn’t say it was an excuse. I was just stating the facts

Okay then what was your point? Not being snarky really want to know what your thoughts are because it sounds like you think this was an okay reason to pull the wrong med.

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
5 hours ago, lindahartford said:

I strongly agree with responsibility uplito administrators and supervisors. Nurses have long lived with work overload and extended days and months of untold stress and it has taken extraordinary effort by nurse unions to get admnistration to decrease nurse/patient ratios even a little bit. We need rapid improvements in that area.

If anyone should be criminally charge, let's charge those administrators and supervisors who are more concerned with the bottom line than with patient outcomes.

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1 hour ago, Ruby Vee said:

If anyone should be criminally charge, let's charge those administrators and supervisors who are more concerned with the bottom line than with patient outcomes.

AMENNNNNNNNNNNNN

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Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
On 2/19/2019 at 7:40 AM, mtnNurse. said:

Leave criminal charges for criminals.

No one is born with "criminal" tattooed on his forehead. No one is a criminal until they've been charged and convicted with a criminal offense. According to Tennessee state statutes, RV meets criteria to be charged under the criminal code. Only a judge or jury will decide whether her behaviour was actually criminal and she deserves to be convicted.

No occupation gets an ollie-ollie-oxen-free.

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Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).
9 hours ago, Lorie Brown RN, MN, JD said:

No insurance covers criminal matters.

Based on the answer I received I checked with my agent - He's looking into what it would cost to get a rider to cover criminal charges. Still if this had been properly handled by RV so that she followed all protocols, properly monitored her patient after administration of the medication then reported her own error and owned it from day one this case might not have risen to the level of criminal negligence. Other parties are guilty for sure the hospital that try to cover this should have been charged with depraved indifference and further charges may still be pending.

I am very interested to see how this all shakes out. Still I worry about nurses who state they have not choice but to practice at a lower level of care because of working conditions - If you can't do the job safely and ethically you should not be doing it.

Hppy

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Specializes in PCU.

And then people wonder why I get irritable when they keep interrupting me when I am pulling meds ?

It is not ok to keep harassing nurses with phone calls and interruptions while they are pulling narcotics and wasting meds, but it happens. It is up to us to tell people to back off and step down and we will get back to them when appropriate because otherwise accidents can happen, as in this case. Sorry, but this case is one thing on top of another in such a manner that one has to do contortions in order to make allowances for the number of missteps that led to the patient's death.

10 minutes ago, hppygr8ful said:

Based on the answer I received I checked with my agent - He's looking into what it would cost to get a rider to cover criminal charges. [...]

Hppy

You make a valid point. I should look into my own insurance coverage. This should be a wakeup call to all, though, that we cannot allow ourselves to become overly complaisant with our protocols, procedures, and medications, but must always review and READ what we pull out of our machines because I have, in the past, pulled the wrong med out of a bin that said it should be another medication. Had I not been paying attention, a patient might have received the right dosage, but wrong medication. However, I read the med when pulled and noted the discrepancy, called pharmacy and alerted them. They were then able to come and review/fix the error, which was not a nursing error, but a stocking error caught before it hit the bedside. When we get too comfortable, that is when accidents are most likely to happen ?

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I get that the nurse in question overrode safeguards, I get that she didn't follow the six rights of medication administration, and I acknowledge that her actions showed a great deal of negligence and recklessness. Revocation of her licensure would be a very fair and warranted punishment, in my opinion.

Having said that: I don't see how incarceration or any further legal action would benefit any party in this situation. This nurse isn't a cold-blooded killer. She made a careless, tragic mistake, continues to have her name dragged through the dirt, will never work in nursing ever again, and has to live with this for the rest of her life. That sounds like punishment enough for me.

She's been removed from an environment where she could potentially cause further harm. I don't see what any additional punitive measures would accomplish.

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