Ex-nurse sentenced to three years probation for fatal medical error

A former Tennessee nurse whose medication error killed a patient was sentenced to three years probation on Friday as hundreds of healthcare workers rallied in court, warning that criminalizing such errors will lead to more deaths in hospitals. .

A state judge imposed the sentence on RaDonda Vaught after she apologized to family members of victim Charlene Murphey and said she will always be haunted by her mistake. Vaught was convicted in March of the criminally negligent homicide and gross negligence of a disabled adult after she accidentally administered the wrong medication.

Nashville Criminal Court Judge Jennifer Smith said Vaught would receive diversion, a way for first-time offenders to have their charges dropped and their records expunged once their parole ends. Prosecutors had opposed diversion, although they did not oppose parole.

The crowd of nurses protesting outside cheered, cried and hugged after hearing the sentence. The relief came after health workers spent hours in the sun and clung to every word of the judge’s lengthy explanation of the sentence, some bound by chains with their hands locked.

The fact that Vaught, 38, faces no criminal penalties has become a rallying point for many nurses already tired of poor working conditions made worse by the pandemic. The crowd outside listened to the hearing through loudspeakers and cheered when some relatives of the victim said they did not want Vaught jailed.

“Knowing my mum, because of the way my mum was and others, I wouldn’t want her to serve jail time. It’s true mom. Mum was a very forgiving person,” Michael Murphey told the court. However, Charlene Murphey’s husband wanted her to serve jail time, according to those close to her.

Vaught apologized to the family in court, saying words will never fully express his “remorse and pain”.

“I will forever be haunted by my role in his untimely demise,” she said. “She didn’t deserve it.”

In assessing whether to grant Vaught diversion, Smith cited Vaught’s remorse, as well as his honesty about the medication error.

Before being sentenced, Vaught apologized to Murphey’s family if the discussion of the hospital’s systemic problems and the danger of criminalizing mistakes had distracted from the death of their loved one.

“I’m sorry that this public outpouring of support for me made you go through this again and again,” he told them. “No one forgot their loved one, no one forgot Mrs Murphey. We are all horribly sorry for what happened.”

After Vaught was found guilty in March, healthcare workers began posting on social media that they were leaving generalist nursing for administrative positions, or even leaving the profession altogether. They said the risk of going to jail for a mistake made nursing intolerable.

Vaught supporters wore purple T-shirts reading ‘#IAmRaDonda’ and ‘Demanding justice for nurses and patients in a broken system’ on Friday as they listened to speeches from fellow nurses and supporters. They also observed a minute of silence in remembrance of Charlene Murphey.

Aleece Ellison traveled from Texas to join them. An emergency room nurse for 14 years, she said she broke down in tears when Vaught was found guilty.

“Never in 14 years have I felt so helpless,” he said. “That could be me.” He came to Nashville to “let the world know that criminalizing a mistake, an honest mistake, is not a direction we want to go in.”

Janie Reed, who drove in from Memphis, said she became a nurse several years ago because “the bedside got dangerous…There were never enough nurses.”

“I don’t normally do things like that,” he said of the protest. “I’m passionate about it. Nurses are going to go to jail and more people are going to die because they don’t report their mistakes.”

Vaught pointed out his mistake as soon as he realized what he had done wrong: he injected the paralyzing drug vecuronium instead of the sedative Versed into 75-year-old Charlene Murphey on December 26, 2017. Vaught admitted to several errors that led to the fatal injection, but his lawyer argued that systemic problems at Vanderbilt University Medical Center were at least partly to blame.

Speaking at Friday’s hearing, Michael Murphey spoke of the devastation his mother’s death had on the family.

“I was at work when all this happened so I couldn’t say goodbye to my mum. I couldn’t give him a hug or a kiss,” he said. “My dad suffers every day because of this. He goes to the cemetery once or twice a week. He goes there and cries. He is 83 years old.

His wife, Chandra Murphey, also testified on Friday about the situation before her mother-in-law’s death.

Source: Publimetro