Radonda Vaught Trial

Updated:   Published

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"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?

Specializes in OB.
13 hours ago, JKL33 said:

I will speak for myself, some of my continued participation which may seem like I'm really enjoying her misfortune is not that at all but rather a desire to be a counterpoint to all of the statements of support where people are just excusing her without even having read the reports...or practiced in acute care....or whatever. Plenty of posts and statements implying she was floating and was completely unfamiliar with all the surroundings, or posts making a wide variety of inappropriate excuses eg "maybe she wasn't familiar with Versed..." or people not understanding that there are going to be places in the hospital where nurses need to be able to rapidly access NMBs. So we hear the same outrage over and over and over again, eg "WHY IS A PARALYTIC IN THE PYXIS!!"

I have pretty much repeatedly stated in various ways that I would much rather have the institution (or the people running the show there) in jail than RV.

LibraSun wrote on another thread (or earlier on this thread) that nurses are so beat down right now and just really struggling and may be tempted to want to sort of use this case to try to bolster our cause against all the mistreatment. I do think that phenomenon is in play. And I just personally don't think this is the right case.

This.  I literally saw posts the day after the conviction from nurses saying things like "Check on your nurse friends today, we're not OK"  in the same way people were saying to check on your Black friends after George Floyd was murdered. Um, no.  Take it down several notches, nurses.  

What really galls me, as someone who lives in this geographical area and has knowledge of nursing conditions here, is that if I suggested, for example, "Hey nurses!  Let's channel this discontent with your jobs (which is VERY valid, your working conditions suck), and form a union to try to make positive change!" I'd get shot down with a million reasons for why it wouldn't work and/or probably get called a communist.  People would rather wring their hands and complain than come up with solutions.

I love nursing and I love nurses.  I don't love the tendency to martyrdom that I see all the time in our profession.  

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15 minutes ago, LibraSunCNM said:

I love nursing and I love nurses.  I don't love the tendency to martyrdom that I see all the time in our profession.  

I agree. I roll my eyes with all the hand-wringing I'm seeing. It makes me love my colleagues so much more. This has been a topic of discussion and not one of them has expressed worry about how it's going to negatively affect nursing. Instead we have had really good discussions examining our own practice, looking for areas we might have become complacent and coming up with solutions to that complacency in order to even more safely deliver care to our vulnerable patients. 

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Specializes in Inpatient Oncology/Public Health.
1 hour ago, Wuzzie said:

https://fox17.com/newsletter-daily/family-of-victim-killed-after-former-nurse-issued-paralyzing-drug-speaks-out-to-backlash

My guess is after they heard the entire story, instead of the redacted version being told on social media, they became rightfully angry.  I feel so bad for them. 

Wow, they need to do way better than that headline. “Family of victim killed.” I was like WHAT? 

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Specializes in Critical Care.
19 hours ago, JKL33 said:

I agree with part of the sentiment in that ISMP statement insofar as the override issue is concerned.  Awhile back on another thread I brought up that I didn't appreciate the focus on the override as some big proof of recklessness and I was told that it was mostly the press who focused on that, not anybody who mattered. I didn't remember it that way. It sure seemed like the override was held out as proof of her imprudent actions. Meanwhile we all use it practically every day and it wouldn't surprise me if a large percentage of us have been directed to use override because of deficient EMR functionality, poor EMR launches (where somehow the wheel needs to be reinvented every.single.time).

I do think her actions were reckless in lay person terms and in nursing terms. As far as the legal aspect of the word goes, I have no pitchfork. I have no need or secret desire for her suffering or being imprisoned. I do think that the loss of license is appropriate.

I will speak for myself, some of my continued participation which may seem like I'm really enjoying her misfortune is not that at all but rather a desire to be a counterpoint to all of the statements of support where people are just excusing her without even having read the reports...or practiced in acute care....or whatever. Plenty of posts and statements implying she was floating and was completely unfamiliar with all the surroundings, or posts making a wide variety of inappropriate excuses eg "maybe she wasn't familiar with Versed..." or people not understanding that there are going to be places in the hospital where nurses need to be able to rapidly access NMBs. So we hear the same outrage over and over and over again, eg "WHY IS A PARALYTIC IN THE PYXIS!!"

I have pretty much repeatedly stated in various ways that I would much rather have the institution (or the people running the show there) in jail than RV.

LibraSun wrote on another thread (or earlier on this thread) that nurses are so beat down right now and just really struggling and may be tempted to want to sort of use this case to try to bolster our cause against all the mistreatment. I do think that phenomenon is in play. And I just personally don't think this is the right case.

 

19 hours ago, JKL33 said:

And...@Muno: Example above! Has nothing to do with anything and is a very poor argument.

And I certainly don't disagree that there are a number of positions and arguments on the pro-Radonda side that need to be pushed back, although the pro-criminal-charge side certainly isn't lacking in cringe-worthy arguments.

So I get the urge to not appease these ideas, but to then accept the downstream effects is a pretty severe case of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.  

The override appeared to be the initial basis of the criminal charges, with the D.A. describing it as though Vaught had gone into the source code of the ADC and reprogrammed it to cause it to open, and it's still listed as one of the "gross neglect" events, along with a long list of other issues that normally we would hope a nurse would report to mitigate future harm, or to treat immediate harm, but in order to do that now the nurse is admitting to a crime.  That's problematic in a harm reduction system largely dependent on nurse reporting.  

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Specializes in Critical Care.
6 hours ago, Wuzzie said:

I agree. I roll my eyes with all the hand-wringing I'm seeing. It makes me love my colleagues so much more. This has been a topic of discussion and not one of them has expressed worry about how it's going to negatively affect nursing. Instead we have had really good discussions examining our own practice, looking for areas we might have become complacent and coming up with solutions to that complacency in order to even more safely deliver care to our vulnerable patients. 

I'm all for peer discussions and self-assessments about our own practice, but given the effects on the patient safety part of nursing practice, I'm not sure how a fellow nurse's lack of concern for this as admirable.  

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Oh for God’s sake Muno just stop. I wasn’t talking about not being concerned about patient safety I was talking about all the whining going on about how nurses are going to be thrown in jail left and right for giving an Aspirin at the wrong time. If we don’t agree with you about everything we are “against patient safety” when we said nothing of the sort. This is what I was talking about before. You keep twisting people’s words and it’s getting old. 

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Specializes in ER.

In my eyes, the override is practically a non-issue. The risk of harm to patients is higher if override ISN'T available. People who don't work in critical care areas may not realize the obstacles that some safety systems make to providing timely care that can be lifesaving.

In fact, I am of the belief that the more safety systems you have, the more prone a nurse is to overly rely on them, forgetting that the most important check is looking at the med and comparing it to the order.

Radonda blew past ALL the safety systems. I don't know WHAT was going on in her brain. Like I've said, the Tennessee BON was extremely derelict in their duties. They should have swiftly moved to declare her unfit to practice.

I think she had/has some sort of brain malfunction happening. Look at her subsequent behavior in trying to obtain a high-powered weapon. I don't know if it rises to criminal behavior though...

 

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Specializes in Critical Care.
12 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:

Oh for God’s sake Muno just stop. I wasn’t talking about not being concerned about patient safety I was talking about all the whining going on about how nurses are going to be thrown in jail left and right for giving an Aspirin at the wrong time. If we don’t agree with you about everything we are “against patient safety” when we said nothing of the sort. This is what I was talking about before. You keep twisting people’s words and it’s getting old. 

I'm not sure how quoting you is "twisting your words", 

7 hours ago, Wuzzie said:

I agree. I roll my eyes with all the hand-wringing I'm seeing. It makes me love my colleagues so much more. This has been a topic of discussion and not one of them has expressed worry about how it's going to negatively affect nursing. Instead we have had really good discussions examining our own practice, looking for areas we might have become complacent and coming up with solutions to that complacency in order to even more safely deliver care to our vulnerable patients. 

If you weren't intending to say that you admire other nurses who aren't discussing how this will negatively affect nursing, then obviously stating exactly that is going to lead to confusion.

As for the aspirin at the wrong time, the statement you linked to from the DA would actually include various fairly common medication errors as a crime.  

I'm open to how you interpret the legal impacts here different, and am interested in how you came to your position that the list of acts and errors that the DA listed as being crimes, which became legal precedent as a result of the case, are not actually that.  

Legally, what constitutes "gross neglect" is not defined by the severity of the act or resulting harm, acts are or are not gross neglect.  The severity only determines what levels within the charge of gross neglect.  Typically, the first offense is a misdemeanor and any subsequent events would be a felony.  

 

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16 minutes ago, MunoRN said:

I'm not sure how quoting you is "twisting your words", 

Please direct quote where I said that I did not care about patient safety. 

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1 hour ago, MunoRN said:

I'm all for peer discussions and self-assessments about our own practice, but given the effects on the patient safety part of nursing practice, I'm not sure how a fellow nurse's lack of concern for this as admirable.  

This is what I am referring to in the post to which I responded. 

21 minutes ago, MunoRN said:

I'm not sure how quoting you is "twisting your words", 

Please directly quote me saying I don’t care about patient safety. 

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26 minutes ago, MunoRN said:

If you weren't intending to say that you admire other nurses who aren't discussing how this will negatively affect nursing, then obviously stating exactly that is going to lead to confusion.

No, I admire nurses who instead of pissing and moaning are willing to take a look at themselves to see if they need improvement. How you can’t see that contributes to increased patient safety is beyond me. 
This is not the first case of a nurse being tried and found guilty for a medication error. In fact, I believe it is the 6th. Please show me even one article that lists the thousands of nurses who have been thrown in jail since the first one in the late 80s. 

FTR, the reason I wanted her found guilty is that so she can never, ever hold a nursing license (or an automatic weapon for that matter) again. If she wasn’t found guilty there would have been a chance that her license could be reinstated on appeal. Given the TBON’s initial action I’m not at all sure they are smart enough to uphold the revocation  

 

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Specializes in Critical Care.
1 hour ago, Wuzzie said:

This is what I am referring to in the post to which I responded. 

Please directly quote me saying I don’t care about patient safety. 

 

9 hours ago, Wuzzie said:

I agree. I roll my eyes with all the hand-wringing I'm seeing. It makes me love my colleagues so much more. This has been a topic of discussion and not one of them has expressed worry about how it's going to negatively affect nursing. Instead we have had really good discussions examining our own practice, looking for areas we might have become complacent and coming up with solutions to that complacency in order to even more safely deliver care to our vulnerable patients. 

I'm making the assumption that you agree that patient safety is a part of nursing.   I find it hard to believe you're saying I got that wrong.

I get that what you seem to be saying is that the precedents that come out of this don't have the potential to adversely affect patient safety, what I'm saying is that I disagree with that and am curious why you consider that to be the case.

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