- After a three-day trial in Nashville, Tenn., that captivated nurses throughout the nation, RaDonda Vaught, a former nurse legally charged for a deadly drug mistake in 2017, was found guilty on Friday of gross negligence of an impaired adult and negligent homicide.
- According to sentencing recommendations published by the Nashville District Attorney’s Office, Vaught could face three to six years in prison for negligence and one to two years for negligent murder if he is found guilty of the latter offence. The district attorney’s spokeswoman, Steve Hayslip, said that Vaught’s sentences are likely to be served consecutively.
- Vaught was acquitted of reckless murder in this case. The lower accusation of reckless homicide was criminally negligent homicide.
- In the United States, nurses and doctors are keenly following the Vaught trial because they fear it may create a precedent criminalising medical blunders. Criminal prosecutions like the one in Vaught’s case are very uncommon; most medical malpractice cases are handled by professional licencing boards or civil courts.
- Concerns have been expressed by the creator of Show Me Your Stethoscope, a Facebook community with more than 600,000 members that the conviction may discourage nurses from reporting their own mistakes or near-mistakes, which might harm patient care.
- After the decision was handed down, she said, “Healthcare just changed forever.” In order to be trustworthy, you can no longer rely on others to speak the truth.
- There were similar concerns raised by the American Nurses Association in response to the trial, which said that the finding “criminalises the honest reporting of errors,” as well as setting a “hazardous precedent.” There are more “effective and fair ways” to manage medical mistakes that are “inevitable,” according to the statement.
- Nurses are already “very short-staffed, stretched, and under enormous pressure,” according to the statement. The epidemic has worsened this tendency. There will be long-term consequences for the profession as a result of this decision.
- Victim Charlene Murphey passed away in late December 2017 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center due to Vaught’s alleged reckless murder and callous negligence of an incapacitated adult. It was alleged that after injecting Murphey with the incorrect medication, Vaught failed to adequately monitor her, leading to the neglect accusation against her.
- An admission to Vanderbilt Hospital for a brain injury was made by Murphey, 75, of Gallatin, Tennessee. According to court evidence and a federal investigation report, her health was improving and she was about to be discharged from the hospital when the mistake was made. Versed, a tranquillizer, was given to Murphey before she was scanned in an MRI-like equipment.
- Vecuronium, a potent paralytic, was supposed to be retrieved by Vaught from a computerised pharmaceutical cabinet. The nurse injected Murphey and then left her to be scanned, according to an investigative report filed in her court case, despite multiple warning signals that she had taken the incorrect medicine out of the refrigerator — including the fact that Versed is a liquid and vecuronium is a powder. Murphey was already deceased by the time the mistake was noticed.
- While presenting their case at the trial, the prosecution depicted Vaught as a careless and reckless nurse who neglected her patient. By likening Vaught to an inebriated motorist who killed a bystander, Assistant District Attorney Chad Jackson said that Vaught had been driving “with [her] eyes closed,” making her even more dangerous than the inebriated driver.
- The fact that Charlene Murphey died because RaDonda Vaught couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to what she was doing is an unchangeable reality in this instance, according to Jackson.
- Attorney Peter Strianse contended that his client committed an honest mistake that did not constitute a crime and became a “scapegoat” for the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s medicine cabinet issues in 2017.
- Vanderbilt’s representatives took the stand and replied. Pharmacy medication safety officer Terry Bosen said that the hospital had some technical difficulties with medicine cabinets in 2017, but that they were rectified weeks before Vaught retrieved the incorrect dose for Murphey. Terry Bosen.
- When Strianse delivered his closing statement, the defence argued that his client could not have “recklessly” ignored warning indications if he really thought she got the correct prescription, and he said there was “substantial disagreement” about whether vecuronium actually killed Murphey.
- Murphey’s death might have been caused solely by her brain damage, according to Eli Zimmerman, a Vanderbilt neurologist who testified at the trial. Even though Feng Li, Davidson County’s Chief Medical Examiner confirmed Murphey died from vecuronium, it was impossible for him to ascertain how much of the medicine she got. Li speculated that the deadly dosage may not have been as high as first thought.
- It seemed like an amateur CSI show, just without the science, Strianse said of the medical examiner’s evidence.
- Vaught did not provide a statement in the case, as required by law. When prosecutors aired an audio tape of Vaught’s interview with law enforcement officers on day two of the trial, she acknowledged to the medication mistake and stated she “probably just murdered a patient,” according to the transcript.
- “Complacent” and “distracted” were words used by Vaught at a separate hearing before the Tennessee Board of Nursing last year, when she admitted to not checking her medications twice despite several chances.
- Vaught broke down in tears in front of the nursing board, saying, “I know the reason this patient is no longer here is because of me.” For as long as I live, there will never be a day when I don’t think about what I did.”
