Posted on 03/25/2022 3:15:19 PM PDT by BenLurkin
A Nashville jury found former Vanderbilt nurse RaDonda Vaught guilty on two charges in the 2017 death of 75-year-old Charlene Murphey.
Vaught was accused of administering a patient a fatal dose of the wrong medication. She admitted to using the wrong medication but pleaded not guilty to the charges in 2019.
Charlene Murphey, of Gallatin, was waiting for a standard scan at Vanderbilt Medical Center in 2017 when she was killed by a fatal dose of the wrong medication. Investigators found Vaught was supposed to administer a sedative for her comfort, but instead she is accused of giving Murphy a different medication that causes paralysis.
Vaught has said she was “distracted” when she overrode a safety feature on the automated medication dispenser, failing to catch a number of red flags between the time she grabbed the medication and gave it to the patient.
More nurses were inside the courtroom Thursday than seen throughout the week and many others have been watching from across the country. Some say this trial should be a civil matter and if Vaught were found guilty, it could change the landscape of nursing, having a domino effect on healthcare for everyone.
On Wednesday, the American Nurses Association released a statement saying that the trial could create a precedent that would ultimately endanger patients if the criminalization of medical errors has “a chilling effect on reporting and process improvement.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wkrn.com ...
I worked in a NICU for 42 years. All meds had to be checked and signed by 2 RNs. I think this should be done on all units.
Vanderbilt has been coasting on their reputation for a while. Pays nurses crap and they get crap.
He's proven to have murdered 29 patients under his care, but the actual number is suspected to be in the hundreds.
Hospital after hospital found out he was killing people and reacted by firing him. When he was quickly hired by another hospital, they didn't say anything about his performance when the new employer called to get a reference for him.
This happened like six or seven times over a fifteen-year period.
The reason given was that they didn't want to be sued, so they just passed him on.
Working as an aide/ward clerk, I had a young RN start to draw an insulin dose: first problem, that must be drawn & checked by 2 RNs.
Alone with me at the desk. she asked, “do I need to use more than one syringe for this, or can I keep using this one, and just change the needle, since it doesn’t hold all of the dose?” I just about fainted; she was trying to draw 3cc of U-100, instead of 3 units!
I told her to wait right there, and DO NOTHING, and I’d be right back; then I ran down the charge nurse to come and take care of an urgent problem.
Is this nurse made an honest mistake, it is absolutely disgusting that she is being prosecuted.
When I was a young man I was doing OJT as part of my medical training at Womack Army Hospital, Ft. Bragg, NC. Meds were put into a small paper cup by a nurse (an RN officer IIRC) but administered by medics or medic trainees from a rolling cart. I picked up a cup to give to a patient and noticed a huge number of pills, 10, to be exact, all of the same med. That struck me as odd so I checked with the nurse on the ward to see if that was right. Instead of checking she dressed me down, told me to just follow orders, and leave the thinking to others. I was stunned by the hostility and arrogance. She would NOT ask the Dr. to confirm the Rx! and ordered me to administer it to the patient. I called over some other guys working on the ward to witness that I refused to do so without confirmation of the Rx, handed her the cup of meds and told her to administer them herself. She went raving mad ballistic! Threatened all of us with MP’s, a firing squad, hanging, kicks to the shins, you name it, and stormed out foaming at the mouth. We just laughed.
After a while she came back into the ward and gave me a cup with only one pill in it. No comment, no explanation, no pat on the back, no thanks. no nothing. Just a cup with 1 5mg. pill in it instead of the 10 pills that made up the 50mgs that she had read incorrectly from the Rx, which would have been lethal if taken. SHE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT, OR AT LEAST QUESTIONED IT! I Don’t know what she said to the Dr. but the first chance we got (we rotated all the different wards together as a team for our OJT) we made sure he knew what really happened. You could see he had heard something else. Then we never saw her again.
It’s as easy to make a mistake as it is intolerable. It’s impossible to be too careful. I’m all for this kind of accountability! And one of my daughters is an RN.
Criminal accountability needs to be extended to ALL medical personnel, and ancillaries, like the CDC, FDA, and BIG PHARMA.
CRIMINAL ACCOUNTABILITY! LET A JURY DECIDE! ONLY A JURY!
Keep the Faith.
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