Nurses Call the Governor of Tennessee

mtmkjr, BSN · Feb 12, 2019

13 minutes ago, Horseshoe said:
Not sure I agree. If she is giving drugs or performing interventions, she is just as legally responsible for that action as any other nurse who gives a drug or performs an intervention. If she screws up and harms the patient with a med error, the patient's assigned nurse is not held accountable for the error.

Yes, I agree with her being legally responsible for that particular task. But while she is completing one task, she is not assigned to other patients who need meds, treatments, monitoring, etc. I'm just saying the pressure is different. If she takes 5 minutes longer to do the one task she's been asked to do, she doesn't need to think of the other patients who she is legally responsible for at the same time.

Wuzzie · Feb 12, 2019

1 hour ago, tiffanyselah said:
This is what I sent to the DA, Mr. Funk: Mr. Funk, ACCOMPLICE - someone who intentionally does something to encourage or help another person to commit a crime. If you are sending this woman, Ms. Vaught to jail for something you call a crime, what about the person who directed her to commit this crime? I applaud you in your attempt to rectify this horrible situation with Ms. Vaught. I however see weakness in your attempt. I and countless other nurses are placed in this very exact situation daily, especially in the ER. I've done it, many other nurses have done it. While you are prosecuting her for the patient in the scanner, her 4, 5, or 6 other patients with heart attacks, strokes, etc were waiting for her in their rooms. Doctors orders pile up, medications for stroke, heart attack meds, ordered. No one to give it but us, and someone asks us to run down to the scanner and "quickly give this med." By luck and grace we usually get away with this unscathed. However, by putting this woman in jail you are doing nothing. She will go to jail and the PEOPLE that direct this sort of behavior will continue to run their hospitals and receive bonus' larger than your yearly pay. They will continue to ask 21 and 22 year old kids to do this over and over. Threaten to take away their livelihood if they do not, and bully them until they finally give in, bypass the checks in place and do what is asked of them. Yes, put the weak ones in jail and the new ones will fall into the same pit. I don't want to make suggestions to you that are more than you can handle, but I want to ASSURE you, that this practice will continue long after you are gone with your chosen path. You want to provide justice? Prosecute along with her those who ordered her to do this. Why put the prostitute in jail and not the John? I'm sure if you even attempted to try and prosecute any administrator in the hospital, the powers that be would probably have your head and your job. But you would be honoring a system of justice. It wasn't her bright idea to give this med. She probably would have been charting, or sitting, or using the bathroom.
Instead someone told her to do this wrong. That same person, unscathed, will continue to order their subordinates to do so, with consequences if they do not. So good luck with this path of prosecuting caregivers for doing exactly what they are told. You are well within your rights of doing so, but to what end? If it's to jail some sad broken poor woman, you can easily do that. But if you are attempting to enact change, to right an error before it possibly happens to you then you are going about it completely wrong. If you constantly attack the minions and not the boss, you will get nowhere. Minions are minions, they can always be replaced; but you already knew that.

Please tell me you didn’t actually send this manifesto?

Horseshoe, BSN, RN · Feb 12, 2019

9 minutes ago, mtmkjr said:
Yes, I agree with her being legally responsible for that particular task. But while she is completing one task, she is not assigned to other patients who need meds, treatments, monitoring, etc. I'm just saying the pressure is different. If she takes 5 minutes longer to do the one task she's been asked to do, she doesn't need to think of the other patients who she is legally responsible for at the same time.

Well, I've only been a staff nurse, and I do know the stress of having a number of patients, all with compelling interests/problems that compete for my time when I can only be in one place at a time. There have been many times when I feel it's all I can do to hold off an inner nervous breakdown. It's stressful as hell to be a staff nurse in a busy unit.

I *don't* know what it's like to be a resource nurse with a pager going off constantly and knowing I'm needed in five different units at the same time, with all of those callers believing that their needs should take priority. So it would be inappropriate of me to state categorically that my role is more stressful. I just don't know that for sure.

Horseshoe, BSN, RN · Feb 12, 2019

3 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:
Please tell me you didn’t actually send this manifesto?

It's not actually funny, but I admit that did make me laugh. I think she did indeed send it.

Advanced Practice Columnist / Guide · Feb 12, 2019

1 hour ago, Horseshoe said:
Unless that was addressed in the report and I just didn't catch it, it's possible that she had numerous calls for other patient interventions waiting for her attention such that she was stressed and hurried. Does that excuse not looking at labels or not monitoring a patient she believed had received IV Versed? No. But I'm not so sure that just because she didn't have the same kind of patient assignment as regular staff nurses, that she didn't still have a huge/unmanageable to-do list of calls for the resource nurse that she was feeling responsibility to answer. It might shed light on a hospital practice that could be addressed to prevent future less egregious, though still undesirable, outcomes.

Part of the report quotes RN#1 (Nurse RV) leaving the scanner to head to the ED with the orientee after giving the "Versed" to the patient. She mentioned a swallow eval in her interview with CMS and it seems like that was to happen on a patient in the ED. Part of her conversation with the orientee appeared to center around this "swallow eval".

RN#2 who asked RN#1 to inject Versed told the RT in the scanner that patient does not need to be monitored and it is possible that RN#2 may have also instructed RN#1 that no monitoring of any kind is required for this patient. However, there were no further quotes from their conversation.

It is possible that she was getting called by someone in the ED to assist with the said swallow eval. It's also possible that in her hurry, she did not question why the patient is in the PET scanner without a monitor and blindly trusted RN#2 that this was a quick inject and go. These dynamics were not addressed in the report.

I'm not excusing RN#1, just thinking of factors that caused her to be distracted.

Advanced Practice Columnist / Guide · Feb 12, 2019

12 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:
Please tell me you didn’t actually send this manifesto?

Oh wuzzie, lol...it's OK, I'm sure many such letters have been sent. There are many impassioned responses here.

Wuzzie · Feb 12, 2019

But Barrel of Monkeys, she talked about going to the bathroom. To the DA! ?

JadedCPN, BSN, RN · Feb 12, 2019

8 minutes ago, juan de la cruz said:
Oh wuzzie, lol...it's OK, I'm sure many such letters have been sent. There are many impassioned responses here.

Lol! Yes I’m sure there’s been a ton.

Nothing wrong with being impassioned of course. I am just struggling with so many people blindly using emotion rather than logic to come to their conclusions. I guess because it “hits close to home.”

mtmkjr, BSN · Feb 12, 2019

3 minutes ago, JadedCPN said:
Lol! Yes I’m sure there’s been a ton.
Nothing wrong with being impassioned of course. I am just struggling with so many people blindly using emotion rather than logic to come to their conclusions. I guess because it “hits close to home.”

It's called letting facts run fast and loose through your mind I think...

Horseshoe, BSN, RN · Feb 12, 2019

1 minute ago, JadedCPN said:
Lol! Yes I’m sure there’s been a ton.
Nothing wrong with being impassioned of course. I am just struggling with so many people blindly using emotion rather than logic to come to their conclusions. I guess because it “hits close to home.”

I don't even have a problem with using emotion. The problem here is that as well intentioned as she is, she clearly hasn't read the report. I think reasonable people can disagree on what the result of this sequence of events should be, but they should at least be up on the actual facts of the case. Or at least on the basic set of facts.

BarrelOfMonkeys, BSN, RN · Feb 12, 2019

9 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:
But Barrel of Monkeys, she talked about going to the bathroom. To the DA! ?

Here is to hoping the DA got the CMS report and all the directed passionate responses from the healthcare community. Both are vital!

Advanced Practice Columnist / Guide · Feb 12, 2019

1 hour ago, JadedCPN said:
Lol! Yes I’m sure there’s been a ton.
Nothing wrong with being impassioned of course. I am just struggling with so many people blindly using emotion rather than logic to come to their conclusions. I guess because it “hits close to home.”

Yes, errors happen and many are due to unsafe working conditions. However, I can’t stand behind making her the poster child for “the cause”...someone who admittedly ignored safeguards that led to the horrific respiratory arrest and subsequent anoxic brain injury death of a patient because she was worried more about another patient’s swallow evaluation yet appeared to have bounced back from the emotional scars of such a fatal error. Let’s find someone else to make a martyr of.