Radonda Vaught Trial

[tnbutterfly - Mary]

"Fourteen Nashvillians were chosen Monday, March 21, 2022 to sit as a jury in the case of RaDonda Vaught, a former Vanderbilt University Medical Center nurse charged in the death of a patient. She faces charges of reckless homicide and impaired adult abuse in the 2017 death of Charlene Murphey."

For more on this story, see

Jury chosen in homicide trial of ex-Vanderbilt nurse RaDonda Vaught after fatal drug error

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

Tennessee Nurse RaDonda Vaught - Legal Perspectives of Fatal Medication Error

What do you think the verdict should/will be?

[Googlenurse, ASN, BSN, RN]

Wow, so everyone has time to look up an unfamiliar medication before or during med passes? 
 

Try doing that in a long term care facility with 45 patients; you will never last!

[Googlenurse, ASN, BSN, RN]

9 hours ago, toomuchbaloney said:

Malpractice insurance doesn't protect you from criminal charges when you are negligent. Similar to how your home insurance doesn't protect you from arson charges if you burn your house down.

I understand. But let’s not act like she was Charles Cullen.  She didn’t intentionally set out to kill the patient. 

[MaxAttack, BSN, RN]

30 minutes ago, Googlenurse said:

Wow, so everyone has time to look up an unfamiliar medication before or during med passes? 
 

Try doing that in a long term care facility with 45 patients; you will never last!

She was an extra nurse without an assignment who was taking a patient for a routine scan. This is literally as far from a 45 patient long-term care assignment as is possible.

On top of that there were warnings while she was pulling it that she would have to acknowledge that the drug was a paralytic and ON THE VIAL that this drug was a paralytic. I'm not going to comment on how long it takes someone to Google a med before administering it but you don't even need to look up anything or know anything in the English language other than the word "paralyzed" to know you shouldn't' be giving it.

I get there are issues like patient load, staffing, long hours, inadequate education, etc. but by her own admission these were not contributing factors. This was simply reckless nursing that likely resulted in horrific suffering as a patient suffocated while being wide awake.

[mtmkjr, BSN]

2 hours ago, MunoRN said:

But if you're not even going to try to disprove the position of the Institute for Safe Medication Practice (ISMP) then I'm not sure what other possible explanations there are for your positions.  

The whole article left me with the impression that some people see nurses as teenagers with undeveloped frontal lobes, lacking good judgement and functioning on impulse

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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

That is the entire summary of the event as described in the article. A simple selection error. No mention of what was actually the basis for gross negligence. 

I believe in Just Culture.  As a nursing supervisor, I practice Just Culture. I have spent time allaying the fears of a nurse after a med error, redirecting the self-condemnation to opportunity to learn and develop safer practice. This does not fall under the same category of error.

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We have once again thrown a frontline practitioner under the bus for a mistake that could have happened in many other hospitals given the common, underlying system vulnerabilities that contributed to the error

No, I disagree.  Unless I repeat, we are teenagers with undeveloped frontal lobes.

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ISMP supports the nurse as a second victim of a fatal error....Second victims are often puzzled when common practices they have used in the past—such as obtaining a medication from an ADC via override—fail to keep a patient safe and result in an error

Was she puzzled that the ADC didn't protect her? Did she wonder how on earth that happened? Or did she recognize immediately that it was her lack of care and attention to safe practice that led to her injecting the patient with what was essentially an unknown substance

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ISMP is not alone in supporting the nurse, as evidenced on various social media platforms and a GoFundMe campaign

Knowing what I know about social media and misguided GoFundMe campaigns, this does not impress me.

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The retrieval of the medication from the ADC via override should NOT be sufficient grounds for the nurse’s criminal indictment

That was not the grounds for the criminal charges and find it hard to believe they don't know it. 

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It is unlikely that nurses, including RaDonda, perceived a significant or unjustifiable risk with obtaining medications via override.

.....the teenager with an undeveloped frontal lobe again

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No action has been taken by the Tennessee Board of Nursing on the license of RaDonda.

Missing facts and misrepresentation of the case (see above: 'selection error'  as a simple make me wonder if the writer is getting the facts from social media

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The patient’s son has said that his mother would forgive RaDonda and feel sorrow for her, lamenting that the mistake had ruined the lives of two people and their families. She would have been upset knowing that RaDonda may spend time in prison.

My heart goes out to the son and I admire and would want a heart of forgiveness if I was in his position. He sounds like a genuinely kind and loving person.  But no one should be speaking for the woman who lost her life. No one can ask her how she feels about some distracted nurse and her orientee injecting her and walking away never looking back, leaving her to to suffocate alone, unable to call for help.

 

[mtmkjr, BSN]

56 minutes ago, Googlenurse said:

I understand. But let’s not act like she was Charles Cullen.  She didn’t intentionally set out to kill the patient. 

There is a lot of misinformation out there. 

I invite you to read the facts of the case given in the CMS report

https://hospitalwatchd.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/VANDERBILT-CMS-PDF.pdf

1 hour ago, Googlenurse said:

I understand. But let’s not act like she was Charles Cullen.  She didn’t intentionally set out to kill the patient. 

She was negligent in her practice and that resulted in a completely avoidable death under horrific circumstances.  No one is acting like she's a serial killer.  They're treating her like a professional who committed negligent malpractice that caused a death. 

[Emergent, RN]

1 hour ago, Googlenurse said:

Wow, so everyone has time to look up an unfamiliar medication before or during med passes? 
 

Try doing that in a long term care facility with 45 patients; you will never last!

Long-term care is a very different type of Nursing than acute care with more unstable patients being given meds they aren't used to. That woman had a brain bleed, it seemed to be resolving, but that's why they were doing a scan on her. Long-term care on the other hand has people that are usually on a bunch of meds that they've been on for a long time. I worked in a nursing home as my first job out of school and those Med passes are very time consuming, but the nurse is often eventually become very familiar with the patient's routine.

[sistrmoon, BSN, RN]

On 3/28/2022 at 2:59 PM, Emergent said:

ZDogg is also on that bandwagon, obviously playing to his audience, in my opinion...

 

He just put up a new post with the same video from 3 days ago that had 2,500 comments on it. It feels a little like he’s stoking the divisive fires. 

[Susie2310]

2 hours ago, mtmkjr said:

 some people see nurses as teenagers with undeveloped frontal lobes, lacking good judgement and functioning on impulse

 

I think there is a desire on the part of some people in the health care industry to see nurses this way and to want nurses to be like this.  

 

 

[Hoosier_RN, MSN]

6 hours ago, Googlenurse said:

Wow, so everyone has time to look up an unfamiliar medication before or during med passes? 
 

Try doing that in a long term care facility with 45 patients; you will never last!

I do, and yes, I even did in LTC care with an unbelievable load of patients. Why? To avoid this type of situation. Did it mean that it took me longer to pass meds? You betcha, but as emergent noted, LTC generally has the same meds being given, patients are stable etc. It's usually a newly marketed med, off label use, etc. Did I lose sleep worrying about a med I may have given incorrectly? Not often, in fact, I can’t even remember a situation. Did I ever have to call a Dr about a med and it's indicated use? Many times, and many times I caught an error, or I learned something new and documented the daylights out of it

[MaxAttack, BSN, RN]

8 hours ago, mtmkjr said:

There is a lot of misinformation out there. 

I invite you to read the facts of the case given in the CMS report

https://hospitalwatchd.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/VANDERBILT-CMS-PDF.pdf

Thanks for this. I had read through some of the court documents but this filled in some of the gaps.

[klone, MSN, RN]

10 hours ago, Googlenurse said:

Wow, so everyone has time to look up an unfamiliar medication before or during med passes? 
 

Try doing that in a long term care facility with 45 patients; you will never last!

She wasn't in a longterm care facility with 45 patients. She was a helper nurse with no patient assignment. It was not a matter of looking up an unfamiliar medication before giving it. It was a matter of NOT EVEN LOOKING AT THE VIAL to know that it was something she was unfamiliar with. She thought she was giving Versed, which she WAS familiar with. 

She literally pulled out, carried around, RECONSTITUTED, drew up, and injected a medication without ONCE looking at the label on the front of the vial. Not ONCE.