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?

[mtmkjr, BSN]

53 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:

It would be abhorrent of me to say so "no" because I don't know and as Klone said will never know but all of these posts about how she openly and heroically admitted it make me want to pull my hair out. She had no choice but to admit it since somebody else found it and the Accudose had an electronic trail with her name all over it. 

Yes, that's been my underlying thought as well

[Emergent, RN]

Family traumatized by reaction to verdict

Quote

Our family is still traumatized and grieve over mom’s horrible death. We are thankful the district attorney’s office obtained justice for us in court. For RaDonda Vaught’s friends and some political candidates to somehow make us and the prosecution into bad guys is humiliating, degrading, and retraumatizes us all over again. We thought we had closure. We may never get over the reaction to this verdict. Our mother, Charlene Murphey, was a caring and loving person. Those using her death for personal gain should be ashamed.

 

[Wuzzie]

9 hours ago, Susie2310 said:

Even if a nurse failed to read the medication label for whatever reason, checking the Five Rights the multiple times we are trained to do this would have caught this:  

"To be clear, nurses cannot be held accountable for achieving the five rights; they can only be held accountable for following the processes that their organizations have designed and held out as the best way to verify the five rights."

The above quote is the ISMP's opinion about it and I am, frankly, horrified. WE are the last line of safety prior to administering medications. Not other people, not machines...us. 

"ISMP was shocked, discouraged, and deeply saddened to learn that the Tennessee (TN) Board of Nursing recently revoked RaDonda Vaught’s professional nursing license indefinitely, fined her $3,000, and stipulated that she pay up to $60,000 in prosecution costs."

They didn't even think she should have lost her license despite the fact that she exercised egregiosly poor nursing judgement and demonstrated in the worst way possible that she is unsafe to practice. I have zero respect for this organization on this subject. They have gone off the rails. 

[sideshowstarlet, BSN, RN]

14 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:

"To be clear, nurses cannot be held accountable for achieving the five rights; they can only be held accountable for following the processes that their organizations have designed and held out as the best way to verify the five rights."

The above quote is the ISMP's opinion about it and I am, frankly, horrified. WE are the last line of safety prior to administering medications. Not other people, not machines...us. 

"ISMP was shocked, discouraged, and deeply saddened to learn that the Tennessee (TN) Board of Nursing recently revoked RaDonda Vaught’s professional nursing license indefinitely, fined her $3,000, and stipulated that she pay up to $60,000 in prosecution costs."

They didn't even think she should have lost her license despite the fact that she exercised egregiosly poor nursing judgement and demonstrated in the worst way possible that she is unsafe to practice. I have zero respect for this organization on this subject. They have gone off the rails. 

That's stupid. There should be no argument that RV should have her license revoked. I mean, if your incompetent driving killed someone, there would be no argument that your DL should be revoked. Tennessee BON should have acted more quickly on this.

The only real argument is whether or not there should be criminal charges (just like how sometimes reckless drivers face criminal charges).

It is important that we take the time to seriously consider whether or not RV deserves to be criminally charged. But having an organization imply that RV shouldn't have lost her license only makes this case go backwards. And that doesn't help anyone.

[sistrmoon, BSN, RN]

10 hours ago, klone said:

The reason why her nurse manager told her she didn't need to chart that she gave the vecuronium is because it was overridden under CM's name, so it would automatically go into her chart that it was pulled.

Pulled, but not administered. They really are two separate pieces of documentation. During emergencies(only then) I have pulled things but not administered them. That was always documented by the person administering it. And how often does a Med get pulled but not administered? Refused, dropped, etc.

[Anonymous865]

Great news.  <<sarcasm>> You can now get an "I stand with RaDonda" t-shirt!!  One was even designed by RaDonda!

All the proceeds to to RaDonda.

https://istandwithradonda.com/

Am I the only one who thinks this is in terrible taste?  Does she grasp that she killed someone?

This must be terribly painful for the family of her victim.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

21 minutes ago, Anonymous865 said:

Am I the only one who thinks this is in terrible taste?

Nope. But there are those who are relying on the media instead of going to source documents to see the full picture. So, I can see how some get caught up in fear.

[Anonymous865]

9 minutes ago, Rose_Queen said:

Nope. But there are those who are relying on the media instead of going to source documents to see the full picture. So, I can see how some get caught up in fear.

Unfortunately a lot of people have read the CMS report and see it as proof that all fault falls squarely on the hospital.  To them the fact that CMS issued "a 50+ page deficiency report" to the hospital is proof it's the hospital's fault.

[MunoRN, RN]

22 hours ago, Wuzzie said:

And I did not say that at all. There you go again Muno. I said as we have all been taught as in using your eyes and brain to run through them and you damn well know that. You ARE being deliberately obtuse. 

I'm just repeating what they said; that system and facility specific procedures for establishing the 5 rights are not universal, they are end goals not defined acts, I don't see any part of their explanation that suggests these shouldn't be the end goals to define proper medication administration.

For instance, to ensure the patient is being given a medication at the "right time", what defines that?  There are various instances where our EMR assigns a time in the MAR that if followed would be a medication error.  As an example, a medication that the order states to give "with meals" might be auto-timed for 1700 yet dinner doesn't come till 1830.  If the nurse gives the medication 1700 was the "right time" followed?

 

22 hours ago, Wuzzie said:

So are you agreeing with them that RV should have been allowed to keep her license? 

I do agree with their argument yes.

22 hours ago, Wuzzie said:

But you’re the one who has repeatedly done this. 

I haven't been the one arguing we should abandon the safety paradigms we've developed in recent history, from processes that come from Aviation like Crew Resource Management, John Nance's safety initiatives, Just Culture, etc.  

I've pointed out to you why those are beneficial, I'm curious what your argument against them are, except that without those systems the placement of blame is far simpler.

On 4/1/2022 at 5:43 PM, Wuzzie said:

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  

 

I promise I've been looking on my own to find what you're talking about, but there don't seem to be any readily available examples, what are you referring to?

[Wuzzie]

No Muno, I’m sorry but I just will not continue this game with you. I have a great deal of respect for you but that fact you think she should have kept her license, your word twisting followed by protests of innocence and that you keep inferring things I never said is just too much for me. I’m happy to continue discussions on other topics but repeatedly having to defend myself against accusations that I don’t care about patient safety is renting too much space in my head and I have other priorities right now. Carry on. 

[Susie2310]

While it is a goal to administer medications safely utilizing each component of the Five Rights (Right Patient; Right Medication; Right Dose; Right Route; Right Time), each component of the Five Rights is a process undertaken by the nurse that has physical and critical thinking components.

In the case of the Right Time, for example, in the case of a medication appearing on the MAR that is mis-timed/inappropriate for the patient to receive at the scheduled time, the nurse would be expected to use critical thinking and nursing judgment in determining this and to follow facility procedures in addressing this:  the Right Time component of the Five Rights doesn't mean slavishly following whatever the MAR says - it means to give the medication at the time the physician has ordered it to be given as long as it is clinically appropriate and not contraindicated for the patient to receive the particular medication at that particular time.  

[sistrmoon, BSN, RN]

What. The. Heck. I went searching for what remedial actions Vanderbilt took and found this from 2020. Would not have affected this case, but how bad an idea was this? Let’s take the “warning: paralyzing agent” label off the top because COVID. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-alerts-health-care-professionals-temporary-absence-warning-statement-vial-caps-two-neuromuscular