RaDonda Vaught listens to sufferer impression statements throughout her sentencing in Nashville. She was discovered responsible in March of criminally negligent murder and gross neglect of an impaired grownup after she unintentionally administered the unsuitable medicine.
Nicole Hester/AP
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Nicole Hester/AP
RaDonda Vaught listens to sufferer impression statements throughout her sentencing in Nashville. She was discovered responsible in March of criminally negligent murder and gross neglect of an impaired grownup after she unintentionally administered the unsuitable medicine.
Nicole Hester/AP
RaDonda Vaught, a former Tennessee nurse convicted of two felonies for a deadly drug error, whose trial grew to become a rallying cry for nurses petrified of the criminalization of medical errors, won’t be required to spend any time in jail.
Davidson County prison court docket Decide Jennifer Smith on Friday granted Vaught a judicial diversion, which suggests her conviction might be expunged if she completes a three-year probation.
Smith stated the Murphey household suffered a “horrible loss” and “nothing that occurs right here at present can ease that loss.”
“Miss Vaught is effectively conscious of the seriousness of the offense,” Smith stated. “She credibly expressed regret on this courtroom.”
The choose famous that Vaught had no prison file, has been faraway from the well being care setting, and can by no means follow nursing once more. The choose additionally stated, “This was a horrible, horrible mistake and there have been penalties to the defendant.”
Because the sentence was learn, cheers erupted from a crowd of a whole lot of purple-clad protesters who gathered exterior the courthouse in opposition to Vaught’s prosecution.
Vaught, 38, a former nurse at Vanderbilt College Medical Heart in Nashville, confronted as much as eight years in jail. In March she was convicted of criminally negligent murder and gross neglect of an impaired grownup for the 2017 dying of 75-year-old affected person Charlene Murphey. Murphey was prescribed Versed, a sedative, however Vaught inadvertently gave her a deadly dose of vecuronium, a robust paralyzer.
Charlene Murphey’s son, Michael Murphey, testified at Friday’s sentencing listening to that his household stays devastated by the sudden dying of their matriarch. She was “a really forgiving individual” who wouldn’t need Vaught to serve any jail time, he stated, however his widower father needed Vaught to obtain “the utmost sentence.”
“My dad suffers each day from this,” Michael Murphey stated. “He goes out to the graveyard three to 4 occasions every week and simply sits on the market and cries.”
Vaught’s case stands out as a result of medical errors ― even lethal ones ― are typically throughout the purview of state medical boards and lawsuits are nearly by no means prosecuted in prison court docket.
The Davidson County district lawyer’s workplace, which didn’t advocate for any explicit sentence or oppose probation, has described Vaught’s case as an indictment of 1 careless nurse, not your complete nursing career. Prosecutors argued in trial that Vaught missed a number of warning indicators when she grabbed the unsuitable drug, together with failing to note Versed is a liquid and vecuronium is a powder.
Vaught admitted her error after the mix-up was found, and her protection largely targeted on arguments that an sincere mistake shouldn’t represent a criminal offense.
Through the listening to on Friday, Vaught stated she was without end modified by Murphey’s dying and was “open and sincere” about her error in an effort to stop future errors by different nurses. Vaught additionally stated there was no public curiosity in sentencing her to jail as a result of she couldn’t presumably re-offend after her nursing license was revoked.
“I’ve misplaced way over simply my nursing license and my profession. I’ll by no means be the identical individual,” Vaught stated, her voice quivering as she started to cry. “When Ms. Murphey died, part of me died together with her.”
At one level throughout her assertion, Vaught turned to face Murphey’s household, apologizing for each the deadly error and the way the general public marketing campaign in opposition to her prosecution could have pressured the household to relive their loss.
“You do not deserve this,” Vaught stated. “I hope it doesn’t come throughout as folks forgetting the one you love. … I believe we’re simply in the midst of methods that do not perceive each other.”
Prosecutors additionally argued at trial that Vaught circumvented safeguards by switching the hospital’s computerized medicine cupboard into “override” mode, which made it potential to withdraw medicines not prescribed to Murphey, together with vecuronium. Different nurses and nursing specialists have instructed KHN that overrides are routinely utilized in many hospitals to entry medicine rapidly.
Theresa Collins, a journey nurse from Georgia who intently adopted the trial, stated she’s going to now not use the function, even when it delays sufferers’ care, after prosecutors argued it proved Vaught’s recklessness.
“I am not going to override something past fundamental saline. I simply do not feel comfy doing it anymore,” Collins stated. “Whenever you criminalize what well being care staff do, it adjustments the entire ballgame.”
Danielle Threet, left, a nurse and pal of RaDonda Vaught, stands subsequent to her mom, Alex Threet, at a rally in assist of Vaught exterior the Davidson County Courthouse in Nashville forward of sentencing.
Brett Kelman/Kaiser Well being Information
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Brett Kelman/Kaiser Well being Information
Danielle Threet, left, a nurse and pal of RaDonda Vaught, stands subsequent to her mom, Alex Threet, at a rally in assist of Vaught exterior the Davidson County Courthouse in Nashville forward of sentencing.
Brett Kelman/Kaiser Well being Information
Vaught’s prosecution drew condemnation from nursing and medical organizations that stated the case’s harmful precedent would worsen the nursing scarcity and make nurses much less forthcoming about errors.
The case additionally spurred appreciable backlash on social media as nurses streamed the trial by way of Fb and rallied behind Vaught on TikTok. That outrage impressed Friday’s protest in Nashville, which drew supporters from so far as Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Nevada.
Amongst these protesters was David Peterson, a nurse who marched Thursday in Washington, D.C., to demand well being care reforms and safer nurse-patient staffing ratios, then drove by way of the night time to Nashville and slept in his automotive so he might protest Vaught’s sentencing. The occasions have been inherently intertwined, he stated.
“The issues being protested in Washington, practices in place due to poor staffing in hospitals, that is precisely what occurred to RaDonda. And it places each nurse in danger each day,” Peterson stated. “It is trigger and impact.”
Tina Vinsant, a Knoxville nurse and podcaster who organized the Nashville protest, stated the group had spoken with Tennessee lawmakers about laws to guard nurses from prison prosecution for medical errors and would pursue comparable payments “in each state.”
Vinsant stated they’d pursue this marketing campaign although Vaught was not despatched to jail.
“She should not have been charged within the first place,” Vinsant stated. “I need her to not serve jail time, in fact, however the sentence would not actually have an effect on the place we go from right here.”
Janis Peterson, a lately retired ICU nurse from Massachusetts, stated she attended the protest after recognizing in Vaught’s case the all-too-familiar challenges from her personal nursing profession. Peterson’s concern was a typical chorus amongst nurses: “It might have been me.”
“And if it was me, and I seemed out that window and noticed 1,000 individuals who supported me, I might really feel higher,” she stated. “As a result of for each a kind of 1,000, there are in all probability 10 extra who assist her however could not come.”
Nashville Public Radio’s Blake Farmer contributed to this report.
KHN (Kaiser Well being Information) is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points. It’s an editorially impartial working program of KFF (Kaiser Household Basis).
