RaDonda Vaught's Arraignment - Guilty or Not of Reckless Homicide and Patient Abuse?

By now, most nurses have heard about RaDonda Vaught, a former Vanderbilt University Medical Center nurse who was charged with reckless homicide and patient abuse as a result of administering the wrong drug that killed a patient in December 2017. Nurses Headlines News

Updated:  

A group of nurses plans to appear in their scrubs at Vaught's arraignment hearing on February 20th show their support. Included in this group is Janie Harvey Garner, founder of Show Me Your Stethoscope.

For those who are interested in showing their support by attending the arraignment, here are the details:

When?

Wednesday, February 20 @ 9:00 AM

Where?

Justice A. A. Birch Building

408 2nd Ave N,

Court Room 6D

Nashville, TN 37201

Judge: Jennifer Smith

What is Arraignment?

Once the accused is represented by counsel, the more formal part of the arraignment, the reading of the charges, takes place. The accused is expected to enter a plea: usually guilty, not guilty, or no contest. The no-contest plea means that the accused is not admitting guilt but will not contest the charges.

What is the verdict going to be???

In the following video, Janie Harvey Garner talks more about the arraignment process.

UPDATED TO ADD VIDEO RE. RADONDA VAUGHT'S NOT GUILTY PLEA

Nurse Gives Lethal Dose of Vecuronium Instead of Versed

Nurse Charged With Homicide

Nurses Call the Governor of Tennessee

I'm shocked-- shocked-- to find out that the Tennessee BON is protecting Vanderbilt's reputation by not taking action against a demonstrably dangerous and reckless nurse.

4 Votes
6 hours ago, mtnNurse. said:

What good will come of putting nurses such as RV in prison? I'd like to see people's opinions about this, if you'll please also address my previous post about 'deterrents' and 'accidents', e.g. How would criminal charges be a deterrent if the much scarier deterrent of killing a patient fails? How can you deter someone from making a mistake -- it's a mistake because they did not foresee it coming or intend for it to happen -- What we CAN do is prevent more mistakes by having more safeguards in place to reduce the chances of human error not being caught in time.

Prison isn't just about deterrence. I see it more as a matter of justice... a declaration of guilt for a wrongdoing.

It is enough IMHO for her to live with a felony conviction. As I've said before, I really don't want to see her serve prison time. That is why there is such a range of options for the judge, including probation or what have you.

2 Votes
Specializes in Dialysis.
8 hours ago, juan de la cruz said:

Wuzzie, are you referring to me? lol. I am flabbergasted that the BON allegedly made a decision already - a decision that makes no sense whatsoever. It's funny though that those deliberations are nowhere to be found on their meeting minutes which does include decisions on other RN licenses (some of which were suspended for non-payment of student loans of all things). Maybe my mind was living in this alternative universe where BON's do the right thing and thought that it will be the case here.

I am pretty much done with this case to be honest. It's a #$#% show and every character has annoyed me including her lawyer and the nurse from that stethoscope thing. At this point, I'm fine with the court proceedings. Sure, have a jury decide her fate in terms of the criminal charges (and there are 2 charges). Whatever the outcome, RV is not going to come out unscathed and she is damaged goods as far as I'm concerned.

https://www.tn.gov/health/health-program-areas/health-professional-boards/nursing-board/nursing-board/meeting-minutes.html

Regardless of how this pans out, I suspect that she will most likely never work as a nurse again. Most places wouldn’t touch it with a 10 ft pole

2 Votes
Specializes in ER.
6 minutes ago, Hoosier_RN said:

Regardless of how this pans out, I suspect that she will most likely never work as a nurse again. Most places wouldn’t touch it with a 10 ft pole

She can wait tables. If she gets the order wrong, she won't get a good tip, but the customer lives...

6 Votes
9 hours ago, mtnNurse. said:

I don't know what led RV to fail in the ways she did but can imagine plenty more possible causes than just assuming "only happened because of...". I think she should be held accountable for her failings to the BON rather than criminal court, which is different from saying she's not accountable at all.

As I've described more in other posts, I don't think criminal charges should ever be brought against nurses (or other professionals) when malice is absent and they make mistakes or stray from standards of practice in efforts to meet impossible work demands. In such situations, the BON (or other licensing agencies for other professionals) should hold the professional accountable. Criminal court should be reserved for malicious criminals.

What you are saying is that medical professionals should not be subject to the same laws that govern every other person in the US.

The purpose of professional boards is to define the professional standards that members of that profession must adhere to. They were never intended to exempt members from the state and federal laws and make them only accountable to the professional board.

If you don't like the reckless homicide law, you can try to repeal it, but as long as there is a reckless homicide law, it should apply to everyone in exactly the same manner.

9 Votes
10 hours ago, mtnNurse. said:

Criminal court should be reserved for malicious criminals.

So I’m guessing, from this statement, that you’re okay with no charges being filed for mercy killings by healthcare providers. After all there was no malicious intent.

And now that you know the Board isn’t going to do anything would you want her taking care of one of your family members or of you?

5 Votes

Radonda was the help all nurse and was asked to give the Versed by the patient's RN because Radiology was threatening to cancel the test due to a time issue. After reading the CMS report, not guilty. This was not solely her fault, but a systematic error.

1) I still don't understand why Versed was the drug of choice for anxiety for a scan. I have always given a small dose of Ativan or Valium, but not Versed.

2) If the primary RN (which was not Radonda) was familiar with Versed and that it required close monitoring, she should have; questioned the doctor's order, made sure the correct monitoring equipment was connected to the patient prior to them going to the scan, or accompanied her own patient to the scan and monitored them.

3) The Pyxis allowing someone to override a paralytic when most paralytics are kept in a separate lock box or hand delivered

4) no scanner being available in the department

5) Radonda's error.

Lastly, when Radonda became aware of her mistake, she admitted it to the doctors immediately. It was Vanderbilt who failed to report the incident to the state to try to cover their butt. When errors like this happen in a hospital, a root cause analysis is supposed to take place. The hospital is then supposed to take steps to implement changes to improve systems to ensure it won't happen again. However, Vanderbilt had no intentions of changing anything until their Medicare funding was threatened. I am not saying Radonda is blame free. She made a tragic tragic mistake and she will live in Hell probably the rest of her life. Her actions were negligent, but not malicious. If she's charged and sent to jail; imagine what this will do to the nursing field.

0 Votes

I strongly believe there is overwhelming evidence for reckless homicide.

I don't think there is a shred of evidence for abuse. You may want to stretch it legally and say she should have monitored the patient because she thought she gave Versed...but that is neglect, not abuse.

2 Votes
7 hours ago, ForeverYoung018 said:

Lastly, when Radonda became aware of her mistake, she admitted it to the doctors immediately. It was Vanderbilt who failed to report the incident to the state to try to cover their butt. When errors like this happen in a hospital, a root cause analysis is supposed to take place. The hospital is then supposed to take steps to implement changes to improve systems to ensure it won't happen again. However, Vanderbilt had no intentions of changing anything until their Medicare funding was threatened. I am not saying Radonda is blame free. She made a tragic tragic mistake and she will live in Hell probably the rest of her life. Her actions were negligent, but not malicious. If she's charged and sent to jail; imagine what this will do to the nursing field.

A nurse practitioner discovered her error, not RV. Her charges do not include a malicious factor...only negligent, which we all agree on.

Here is food for thought....the fact she was able to pull a paralytic doesn't matter. It truly doesn't matter what drugs they keep/don't keep in the Pyxis. The Pyxis isn't the problem. There was an appropriate warning/packaging in place. It was all ignored.

What if she pulled a different medication? One she had an anaphylactic reaction to? One with a fatal combination with something else the patient was on? You wouldn't be blaming the Pyxis, you would be placing more blame on the nurse for not looking at the vial.

So we need to stop putting the blame on the paralytic...it is hardly the issue.

4 Votes
On 2/21/2019 at 9:20 PM, mtnNurse. said:

Here's a question for you based on the rest of the comments you made. Let's say we just start throwing in jail everyone involved in medical errors. This will lead to greater safety because...how exactly? How will criminalizing nurses prevent other nurses from having accidents? People will be too afraid of jail to make a mistake? So killing a patient isn't scary enough, but then jail would be, is what you're saying? Jail is a bigger deterrent then KILLING a patient?? And besides, how to you deter someone from having an accident?? Does that question not defy the very definition of 'accident'???

The district attorney has made it very clear why RV is being charged and for whatever reason....you keep ignoring this very important and significant difference.

She bypassed MULTIPLE safety checks...not just one, not just two...at least eight we have counted.

Jail is not made to be a deterrent, it's made to be a punishment. How will criminalizing nurses prevent other nurses from having accidents? Well first of all, what RV did wasn't an accident...it is the end result of what happens when you make the deliberate choice to be a sloppy nurse.

Nurses right now fear two things: Having their license sanctioned and being sued. You hear this all the time....but what is the reality????

I challenged a class of nursing students, giving them the freedom to go back 10 years, to find ONE case in my state by the BON where someone had their license sanctioned due to an honest med error. All they had to find is one. I even offered a cash incentive.

Guess how many they found? Zero. They had a week to look. Every case they found had the same theme: False charting, on drugs, abuse of the patient (actual, physical abuse), or severe neglect (leaving a patient unattended for an extended period of time that caused injury). But honest error? Nope.

When I worked the floor I think I paid something like $150 a year for . Why do you think it's only $150 for an RN and over $13K for an APRN? It's because RNs RARELY get sued.

Now...let's go back to criminal charges. I used to be on a committee where we reviewed med errors. In almost every case...there were one or two steps that were missed. The most common med errors was the wrong dose or at the wrong time, or both, second most common was wrong patient....usually caused by nurse pulling several meds at once and then not scanning before administration.

At my hospital, routine overrides without a valid reason in a non-critical unit for a non-critical reason will have you getting a first warning, second warning, and then you are terminated. There were at least one or two nurses in almost every unit that CONSTANTLY were overriding/not scanning medications. When everyone else is at 3 to 7% and yours is at 70 to 80%? The problem is you...not the system. When brought in for counseling they all had the same flippant attitude of "I don't have time". Well...everyone else does? Why don't you?

I'll tell you what WILL come out in this investigation...RVs history of overriding non-critical meds and her history of whether she scanned them or not. If her practice is out of sync with her co-workers, that is going to be even more damning. My guess is that you'll find out that is the case because she even had an orientee....and made no effort to set an example.

4 Votes
20 hours ago, Emergent said:

Maybe the defense can subpoena the esteemed members of the Tennessee BON to hear their testimony as to why Radonda is considered a safe, prudent nurse. I'd like to hear their rationale.

It would also be fascinating to see a list of the offenses that did earn sanctions from the board. I'll bet many of them have strong, moral turpitude overtones. Smoking a joint=3 to 5 years of probation. Causing an agonizing death of a patient by a likable woman, who ignored every precept of safe medicine administration = NADA.

You don't know this. It takes 4 to 6 months for the BON to take action and I am sure they were waiting on the CMS report, which was only completed in November of 2018.

Part of the problem in her license not being sanctioned earlier rests with Vanderbilt...they never reported her to the BON. So you can't blame the BON for what they didn't know.

1 Votes
5 minutes ago, Jory said:

You don't know this. It takes 4 to 6 months for the BON to take action and I am sure they were waiting on the CMS report, which was only completed in November of 2018.

Part of the problem in her license not being sanctioned earlier rests with Vanderbilt...they never reported her to the BON. So you can't blame the BON for what they didn't know.

Apparently they have already done an investigation that took nine months to complete. No action was taken against her license. I imagine that will change with all of this publicity but as of now here license is active and unemcumbered.

2 Votes
+ Add a Comment