Nurse Charged With Homicide

[Nurse Beth]

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.

[MunoRN, RN]

21 hours ago, Emergent said:

If that what it takes to protect the public, so be it.

It's obvious to me that the Tennessee BON is in need of serious reform. Also, Radonda is probably guilty of negligent homicide.

I would advise her to take a plea bargain. It's unfortunate that it had to come to this, I'm sorry about the whole thing.

I would feel the same about a trucker who went 80 in a snowstorm, jackknifed, and killed an innocent person.

As ISMP and other patient safety advocacy sources have pointed out, this will only make it more difficult to prevent harm to patients in the future.

What defines reckless homicide when it comes to driving is an apt one, which is why I used it earlier. To be considered reckless endangerment (reckless homicide is reckless endangerment that results in death, but even if no harm occurs it's still reckless endangerment) the act has to be one that the person should know will most likely result in harm. In the RV legal case, what's being argued is that simply using the override function is itself reckless endangerment, meaning every time a nurse utilizes the override function they will be committing a crime, if the case is able to establish this precedent.

It's been argued that her other errors were just as bad, which would mean pulling the wrong med from an ADC, for instance, would also qualify as a crime going forward.

In dealing with issues that contribute to patient harm or near misses I rely heavily on reports of these issues, the vast majority of which are self-reported by the person making the error or near miss. There's a direct correlation between the willingness to self-report these issues and avoiding patient harm, less willingness to self-report equals more harm to patients.

[magellan]

If she is guilty of reckless homicide, the hospitals therefore are guilty of it every day that it operates especially outside of the State of California since they don't have patient ratio to begin with. This hospital operators know from the longest period of time that the moment that the nurse handles so many patients, it endangers the life of the patients. How come that they don't implement nurse patient ratio so to speak that homicide won't be issue during patient care. Then you said that Radonda should be punished to protect the public then why and how come that patient ratio is not being implemented to protect the public?

[magellan]

If she is guilty of reckless homicide, the hospitals therefore are guilty of it every day that it operates especially outside of the State of California since they don't have patient ratio to begin with. This hospital operators know from the longest period of time that the moment that the nurse handles so many patients, it endangers the life of the patients. How come that they don't implement nurse patient ratio so to speak that homicide won't be issue during patient care. Then you said that Radonda should be punished to protect the public then why and how come that patient ratio is not being implemented to protect the public?

[NurseCastle]

The Nashville District Attorney said they were charging her specifically because she administered the fatal medication after overriding the safety mechanism in the dispensing machine.

Geez, how many overrides are done in a week? A day?

My primary question is: why did they have Vecuronium on a regular med cart anyway?! Sounds like a serious process error to me.

And all things like this are going to accomplish are less reporting of errors. They've gone way past non-punitive, straight to criminal. Disgraceful.

[Wuzzie]

1 hour ago, NurseCastle said:

Geez, how many overrides are done in a week? A day? 

Well, in her case she overrode multiple safety mechanisms in just one med pull so not really the same thing.

1 hour ago, NurseCastle said:

My primary question is: why did they have Vecuronium on a regular med cart anyway?! Sounds like a serious process error to me.

Not a slam but you must not work in an ICU setting. These kinds of medications are necessary to have immediately on hand for emergent situations. And if you think about it, any medication has the potential to harm or even kill a patient.

[KJoRN81, RN]

1 hour ago, NurseCastle said:

The Nashville District Attorney said they were charging her specifically because she administered the fatal medication after overriding the safety mechanism in the dispensing machine.

Geez, how many overrides are done in a week? A day?

My primary question is: why did they have Vecuronium on a regular med cart anyway?! Sounds like a serious process error to me.

And all things like this are going to accomplish are less reporting of errors. They've gone way past non-punitive, straight to criminal. Disgraceful.

Yeah, she overrode/skipped/ignored several procedures. I mean, when that happens one should expect disciplinary action at the very least!

[Susie2310]

I don't believe that a nurse arguing in Court that one was unable to meet the Standard of Care and provide safe patient care because the facility culture is not to provide actual safe patient care, just the appearance of safe care, would garner very much sympathy. I would expect the response to be along the lines of: "If you know that the facility you work at does not support or facilitate nurses in practicing nursing safely, why are you choosing to practice there?"

[gcupid]

On 2/15/2019 at 1:01 PM, juan de la cruz said:

The variability in quality of care I do agree on. Maybe what was meant was that there are strong union protections in many hospitals. For instance, nurses can fill out an "Assignment Despite Objection" form as a way to tell the manager that "yes, I'm not going to abandon my patients but you're putting me in an unsafe situation and you can be held liable if something were to happen".

Assignment despite objection form shouldn't even exist. I'bet those forms are in paper. Management can throw that document in the trash as soon as you turn it in. If one must follow that protocol, you should be able to submit those forms directly to the state board of nursing via email and the board should actually audit how often and for what reason are these forms being submitted and determine fines/require improvement plans/& public notice if it's truly invested in the safety of the population.

Give nurses some power. We run the hospitals and we are grossly underpaid and disrespected. Texas is a non-union state and it has somewhat the same allowance for the nurse to report unsafe situations when being forced to take a crazy unsafe assignment.

[gcupid]

On 4/9/2019 at 4:47 PM, magellan said:

If she is guilty of reckless homicide, the hospitals therefore are guilty of it every day that it operates especially outside of the State of California since they don't have patient ratio to begin with. This hospital operators know from the longest period of time that the moment that the nurse handles so many patients, it endangers the life of the patients. How come that they don't implement nurse patient ratio so to speak that homicide won't be issue during patient care. Then you said that Radonda should be punished to protect the public then why and how come that patient ratio is not being implemented to protect the public?

EXACTLY!!!!! X 10,000%

[Wuzzie]

10 minutes ago, gcupid said:

EXACTLY!!!!! X 10,000%

Completely different topic worthy if it's own thread.

[hppygr8ful, ASN, RN, EMT-I]

Does anyone know what's happening in the case in question? I thought there was a court date sometime in April but haven't seen any updates.

Hppy

[jmtndl]

She should be charged with involuntary manslaughter and lose her license. Her careless action resulted in a nightmarish death for a patient. I feel for her, but I feel more for a lady who laid in a long banging tube and slowly suffocated to death completely unable to communicate with anyone.