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

[tnbutterfly - Mary]

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

[Wuzzie]

6 hours ago, Wuzzie said:

This^

Also, I asked a question of all of you who thought this should be handled by the BON. The BON has decided to do nothing. RV is not suspended or sanctioned. Her license remains active and unencumbered. She has not even been ordered remediation. This was after a 9 month investigation by said board so is unlikely to change. Do you think we should be okay with their decision? If charges had never been fired she would have gotten off scot free after killing a patient because of her egregiously stupid actions. And she may still. I’m sorry but there are no circumstances that relieve us of our personal responsibility to practice in a prudent manner and if the board isn’t going to do anything somebody else should.

Buehler? Buehler?

[Emergent, RN]

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.

[Wuzzie]

20 minutes ago, Emergent said:

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.

Hell, have a completely controlled psych diagnosis=monitoring, DUI when you were 20 and you're now a nurse at 40=monitoring, act a little sleepy at work and get reported=monitoring, ignore all standards of prudent nursing practice and kill a patient=hero! SMDH!

And I'm irritated as heck at all the posters who wanted to leave it up to the board to determine the consequences RV should get who now have remained utterly silent once it was determined that the board is going to do NOTHING!

[Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP]

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

[Wuzzie]

18 minutes 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

LOL! Well, not really. You've been more toward the middle on this than others. But don't you find it as mystifying as I do that all the very vocal posters have said absolutely nothing about the lack of board action?

[mtnNurse., BSN]

13 hours ago, mtmkjr said:

Your entire premise seems to be based on the assumption that the failure to safely practice by RV only happened because of working conditions set by the hospital and that she was working outside of her level of experience, again at failure of the hospital to require adequate experience for what was expected of her.

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.

13 hours ago, mtmkjr said:

So...

Premise 1: For the sake of argument, would your opinion change if you learned that staffing was adequate, and the workload was light that day?

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.

13 hours ago, mtmkjr said:

Premise 2. Again, for the sake of argument, let's also assume that at the very least, she knew the basics of nursing implications regarding Versed, and was familiar with vecuronium

So take those two assumptions and pretend the facts are different than what you believe to be true.

In addition, you learn that the BON has given her a pass....What then?

(I find it impossible to believe that a nurse could spend a year in ICU and not know those meds).

And I find it hard to believe that RV was being aware of what she was doing and aware that there was a risk of killing her patient in the very moments of her failings. I strongly believe that if she had stopped to think about what she was doing, she would have caught her mistake rather than risk the life of her patient. Again, as people have copied in other threads what reckless homicide means, and by using those definitions, the mindlessness her behavior exhibits is what indicates she is not guilty of reckless homicide. I believe she was in a mindless rush and should be held accountable by BON. Good question about what to do if BON is not serving their purpose...should we somehow hold BON accountable in such cases? Or do we need to trust that BON used their best judgement in determining their actions on this case -- and if we can't trust that, then concerned nurses need to get involved in the BON and work to make a difference, whether it's to get on the board yourself or bring your concerns to the board. It's just like a union or democracy -- if you don't like the judgement used by the leaders within, then you need to either run for office yourself or support those you do trust the judgement of in becoming leaders.

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.

[Emergent, RN]

@juan de la cruz I'm with you on the lawyer and stethoscope lady. She comes across poorly to me, disheveled and one dimensional. The 'nurses are victims of an unfair system' routine gets old after a while.

[guest584920]

This case is tragic for all parties involved. And should serve as a cautionary tale to all of us.

Clearly there are several issues here; not the least of which is why a staff is nurse pusing Versed for a patient to have a PET scan -how would they monitor the patient during the procedure? What setting was she working in? Was she trained and qualified to do sedation? What kind of supervision did she have? What was the patient ratio? How many days in a row had she worked? What time of day did the incident take place? What safeguards were baked into the ADC?- and did they work as they were supposed to? What did Vanderbilt's policies look like? Asking these questions can improve quality and safety.

And for Vanderbilt to fail to address system issues and just throw the RN under the bus will not solve any quality & safety issues. It just leaves the potential for this to happen again.

When organizations are punitive about med errors -people won't report them. And when nurses start getting arrested for them we shall see an exodus out of our profession.

Nobody goes to work and plans to make a mistake let alone one that kills somebody. With that said, her mistakes were egregious and she should be held accountable but criminally prosecuted I am not so sure -how will that impact our profession?

We need to be promoting a just culture to promote safety and accountability. I just wish other clinicians were held to the same robust standards as the staff nurse.

No matter how good we are at what we do, none of us are immune from potentially making a mistake. So people follow policy, follow the basics of medication administration and be kind to one another.

[Wuzzie]

2 hours ago, DaveMHA-RN said:

Clearly there are several issues here; not the least of which is 1.why a staff is nurse pusing Versed for a patient to have a PET scan -2.how would they monitor the patient during the procedure? 3.What setting was she working in? 4.Was she trained and qualified to do sedation? 5.What kind of supervision did she have? 6.What was the patient ratio? 7.How many days in a row had she worked? 8.What time of day did the incident take place? 9.What safeguards were baked into the ADC?- and did they work as they were supposed to? What did Vanderbilt's policies look like? Asking these questions can improve quality and safety.

10.When organizations are punitive about med errors -people won't report them. And when nurses start getting arrested for them we shall see an exodus out of our profession.

11. Nobody goes to work and plans to make a mistake let alone one that kills somebody. With that said, her mistakes were egregious and she should be held accountable but criminally prosecuted I am not so sure -how will that impact our profession?

1. RV is an ICU nurse giving an anxiolytic not sedative dose of Versed.

2. Electronically monitoring not required. RV should have observed patient after administration for adverse effects as a prudent nurse would after giving any IV push med.

3. She was the ICU resource nurse.

4. She wasn't doing sedation she was giving an anxiolytic.

5. The standards of prudent nursing care.

6. She had no other patients assigned to her.

7. Personal accountability ie. don't schedule yourself too many days in a row.

8. Doesn't matter. We are to provide safe nursing care for the entirety of our shift.

9. Multiple which she totally ignored.

10. Seriously doubt this. It might scare a few off.

11. Except outside of the criminal charges she is NOT being held accountable. Her license is active and unencumbered even after the Board investigated. Maybe this will make people realize that we aren't some sort of special group of people with carte blanche to screw up.

[Tenebrae, BSN, RN]

On 2/21/2019 at 2:36 PM, tnbutterfly said:

In the news today following the arraignment, it was stated that the TN BON, after a nine-month long investigation, found no reason to take disciplinary action against RaDonda’s license. I will be posting another video in this thread that gives more information about this.

Merging this discussion with another thread about the arraignment was started yesterday.

That is absolutely mental

While I dont agree with this nurse being criminally charge, the board of nursing should have stepped up and done something. Perhaps if the BON had done something she wouldnt now be facing criminal charged

[mtmkjr, BSN]

6 hours ago, mtnNurse. said:

Quote

So...

Premise 1: For the sake of argument, would your opinion change if you learned that staffing was adequate, and the workload was light that day?

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.

You can't let go of your premise I see

[mtmkjr, BSN]

6 hours ago, mtnNurse. said:

Good question about what to do if BON is not serving their purpose...should we somehow hold BON accountable in such cases? Or do we need to trust that BON used their best judgement in determining their actions on this case -- and if we can't trust that, then concerned nurses need to get involved in the BON and work to make a difference, whether it's to get on the board yourself or bring your concerns to the board. It's just like a union or democracy -- if you don't like the judgement used by the leaders within, then you need to either run for office yourself or support those you do trust the judgement of in becoming leaders.

I hope the BON is held accountable if the report is true.