Nurse Convicted of Neglect and Negligent Homicide for Fatal Drug Error
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — RaDonda Vaught, a previous nurse criminally prosecuted for a deadly drug mistake in 2017, was convicted of gross neglect of an impaired grownup and negligent murder Friday soon after a 3-working day demo that gripped nurses across the country.
Vaught faces three to six many years in prison for neglect and one particular to two several years for negligent homicide as a defendant with no prior convictions, according to sentencing guidelines offered by the Nashville district attorney’s office. Vaught is scheduled to be sentenced May possibly 13, and her sentences are probably to run concurrently, explained DA spokesperson Steve Hayslip.
Vaught was acquitted of reckless murder. Criminally negligent homicide was a lesser cost integrated underneath reckless murder.
Vaught’s trial has been carefully watched by nurses and healthcare industry experts throughout the place, numerous of whom get worried it could set a precedent of criminalizing professional medical issues. Medical faults are frequently handled by expert licensing boards or civil courts, and legal prosecutions like Vaught’s scenario are exceedingly uncommon.
Janie Harvey Garner, the founder of Demonstrate Me Your Stethoscope, a Fb nursing team with much more than 600,000 members, anxious the conviction would have a chilling result on nurses disclosing their have problems or in the vicinity of-faults, which would have a detrimental effect on the excellent of individual treatment.
“Health treatment just transformed endlessly,” she stated right after the verdict. “You can no more time rely on individuals to explain to the truth of the matter due to the fact they will be incriminating themselves.”
In the wake of the verdict, the American Nurses Affiliation issued a assertion expressing equivalent fears about Vaught’s conviction, saying it sets a “dangerous precedent” of “criminalizing the truthful reporting of blunders.” Some professional medical faults are “inevitable,” the assertion stated, and there are much more “effective and just mechanisms” to deal with them than felony prosecution.
“The nursing career is already incredibly short-staffed, strained and struggling with enormous stress — an regrettable multi-12 months trend that was even more exacerbated by the results of the pandemic,” the statement said. “This ruling will have a lengthy-long lasting destructive impact on the job.”
Vaught, 38, of Bethpage, Tennessee, was arrested in 2019 and charged with reckless murder and gross neglect of an impaired adult in connection with the killing of Charlene Murphey, who died at Vanderbilt College Medical Heart in late December 2017. The neglect charge stemmed from allegations that Vaught did not effectively check Murphey soon after she was injected with the wrong drug.
Murphey, 75, of Gallatin, Tennessee, was admitted to Vanderbilt for a mind injuries. At the time of the error, her ailment was improving, and she was currently being organized for discharge from the medical center, according to courtroom testimony and a federal investigation report. Murphey was prescribed a sedative, Versed, to calm her before currently being scanned in a huge, MRI-like device.
Vaught was tasked to retrieve Versed from a computerized medicine cupboard but in its place grabbed a powerful paralyzer, vecuronium. In accordance to an investigation report filed in her court scenario, the nurse neglected numerous warning signs as she withdrew the wrong drug — including that Versed is a liquid but vecuronium is a powder — and then injected Murphey and still left her to be scanned. By the time the mistake was discovered, Murphey was brain-useless.
In the course of the demo, prosecutors painted Vaught as an irresponsible and uncaring nurse who disregarded her education and deserted her individual. Assistant District Legal professional Chad Jackson likened Vaught to a drunken driver who killed a bystander, but explained the nurse was “worse” due to the fact it was as if she was “driving with [her] eyes closed.”
“The immutable simple fact of this situation is that Charlene Murphey is lifeless since RaDonda Vaught could not trouble to pay notice to what she was performing,” Jackson stated.
Vaught’s lawyer, Peter Strianse, argued that his consumer manufactured an genuine slip-up that did not constitute a crime and grew to become a “scapegoat” for systemic complications relevant to treatment cupboards at Vanderbilt University Health care Center in 2017.
But Vanderbilt officials countered on the stand. Terry Bosen, Vanderbilt’s pharmacy medication protection officer, testified that the healthcare facility had some technical troubles with medicine cupboards in 2017 but that they ended up fixed weeks right before Vaught pulled the completely wrong drug for Murphey.
In his closing statement, Strianse focused the reckless homicide charge, arguing that his shopper could not have “recklessly” disregarded warning indications if she earnestly believed she experienced the suitable drug and saying that there was “considerable debate” around no matter whether vecuronium truly killed Murphey.
In the course of the demo, Dr. Eli Zimmerman, a Vanderbilt neurologist, testified it was “in the realm of possibility” Murphey’s dying was brought about totally by her mind damage. In addition, Davidson County Main Clinical Examiner Feng Li testified that though he established Murphey died from vecuronium, he couldn’t validate how a great deal of the drug she essentially been given. Li stated a tiny dose may not have been deadly.
“I really don’t imply to be facetious,” Strianse explained of the health-related examiner’s testimony, “but it sort of sounded like some newbie ‘CSI’ episode — only with no the science.”
Vaught did not testify. On the next working day of the demo, prosecutors performed an audio recording of Vaught’s job interview with legislation enforcement officials in which she admitted to the drug mistake and claimed she “probably just killed a affected person.”
During a separate proceeding prior to the Tennessee Board of Nursing past yr, Vaught testified that she allowed herself to turn out to be “complacent” and “distracted” when making use of the medicine cabinet and did not double-look at which drug she had withdrawn despite a number of alternatives.
“I know the rationale this patient is no for a longer time here is because of me,” Vaught told the nursing board, beginning to cry. “There won’t at any time be a working day that goes by that I really don’t feel about what I did.”
KHN (Kaiser Wellness Information) is a countrywide newsroom that creates in-depth journalism about well being difficulties. Alongside one another with Plan Examination and Polling, KHN is one of the 3 main functioning programs at KFF (Kaiser Household Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit corporation supplying facts on well being challenges to the nation.
USE OUR Material
This story can be republished for totally free (facts).