Nurses protest Tennessee sentence for deadly medical mistake

Nashville, May 13 (BNA): Nurses traveled from across the country to protest Friday outside the courthouse as a former Tennessee nurse faced up to eight years in prison for wrongly causing the death of a patient, the Associated Press reported.

Radonda Voth was convicted in March of murder for criminal negligence and gross negligence of a disabled adult after she accidentally took the wrong medication.

It is unlikely that the maximum sentence would be due to her lack of previous offenses. An introductory report rated her risk of reoffending as “low.” However, her conviction has become a rallying point for many nurses who are already tired of poor working conditions exacerbated by the pandemic.

Some have left bedside nursing for management positions while others have left the profession entirely, saying that the risk of going to prison for a mistake made nursing unbearable.

The ruling comes a day after International Nurses Day, and some nurses headed to Nashville from a rally for better working conditions in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Among the dozens of protesters outside the courtroom, some wore T-shirts that read “I am Radonda” and “Seek justice for nurses and patients in a broken system.”

“Everyone I talk to is angry about it,” said Janie Harvey Garner, the nurse who founded the advocacy group Show Me Your Stethoscope and helped raise funds to advocate for Vaught. “She should not have been able to practice nursing again. She should have been disciplined by the (Nursing) Board, but prison?”

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Harvey, who was driving to court from Georgia, said it was “terrifying” to think she could be prosecuted for wrongdoing. She predicted that nurses would start trying to cover up their mistakes instead of reporting them. Vaught reported her mistake as soon as she realized what she had done wrong.

Vaught, 38, injected the paralyzing drug vecuronium into 75-year-old Charlene Murphy instead of the sedative Versed on December 26, 2017. Vaught freely admitted to numerous wrongdoing, but defense attorneys argued that the systemic problems at least at Vanderbilt University Medical Center Part of the blame.

At the nurse’s trial, an expert witness from the state argued that Vaught violated the standard of care expected of nurses. In addition to taking the wrong medication, she failed to read the name of the medication, didn’t notice a red warning above the medication, and didn’t stay with the patient to check for an adverse reaction, Nurse Legal Counsel Donna Jones said.

Leanna Craft, a teaching nurse in the neurological intensive care unit where Vaught worked, confirmed that it was common for nurses at the time to bypass the system in order to obtain medication. The hospital recently updated its electronic records system, which has delayed drug refunds. There was also no scanner in the imaging area to check the medication against the patient identification bracelet.

The jury found Fout not guilty of reckless murder. One of the lesser crimes under the original charge was criminal negligence murder.

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AOQ








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