Published
The state of TN is prosecuting nurse Radonda Vaught for reckless homicide. You can contact the Governor or DA to let him know what you think about this choice.
Governor Bill Lee
1st Floor, State Capitol
Nashville, TN 37243
(615) 741-2001
email: [email protected]
District Attorney Glenn Funk
Quote from the ISMP
"Unable to find Versed on the patient’s profile in an automated dispensing cabinet (ADC), RaDonda enabled the override function, entered “VE” into a search field, and erroneously selected and removed vecuronium. She did not notice the selection error and administered vecuronium to the patient, believing it was Versed. The patient experienced an unwitnessed respiratory arrest and died."
Because she didn't freaking LOOK at it.
53 minutes ago, TriciaJ said:I remember setting up meds for a ward of 37 patients using little med cards and metal trays with slots and holes. We've come a long way, baby. In the past few decades, hospitals have implemented marvelous systems for preventing errors. But when we wantonly bypass them, they might as well not exist.
The hospital might improve the system even further. But where they really fell down was having someone on the payroll who was practicing unsafely. Unless this shows to be out-of-character for this nurse, I think the hospital is more flawed in their personnel practices than in their medication delivery systems.
It is a problem and the only way I hope this never happens again is that all of us follow standards and our hospitals respect the nurse's dedicated time for med administration. The first time I heard about this case is from one of our new hires who worked in the MICU at Vanderbilt. She didn't know Nurse RV but she attests to how that medical center can be so chaotic and disorganized sometimes. I haven't seen her in a while though as we move around between various ICU's.
1 hour ago, TriciaJ said:The second victim was the patient's family.
That's just a term used to describe the after-effects of a serious medical error (including medication errors) on the healthcare provider involved. It is well studied and some of these providers do go through traumatic feelings, guilt, depression, etc. That does not minimize the loss that the family of Nurse RV's victim is experiencing.
8 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:Guys I know this is a hot topic and our passion can make our tempers flare but could you just "take it outside"? I'd hate for this thread to be shut down because of in-fighting. It's too important.
Sorry but I was referred to as a "she". Seriously, I'm sorry if I offended anyone. Perhaps I should go away.
Horseshoe, BSN, RN
5,879 Posts
So I was off line living my life and came back this morning to read the latest posts, and it seems like the thread is taking a negative turn. I feel like reasonable people can disagree, but there are some who seem to feel that there is only one legitimate point of view and just cannot conceive of how other thoughtful intelligent people might view it differently (and so they must not be thoughtful or intelligent). So then we get snark, and after that, sarcasm for those who don't toe the line of our thinking, then insults about reading comprehension or ability to "get it," and then next we will likely get personal insults and ad hominem attacks....and so on. This is what often happens after 20 pages of the same people repeating themselves over and over, and it's not becoming of us. It might not be a bad idea to do a self imposed time out before terms of service get shredded to a pulp and the mods do it for us.