Nurse RaDonda Vaught convicted of 2 felonies for lethal medical mistake : Pictures

Updated 11:50 p.m. ET

RaDonda Vaught, a former nurse criminally prosecuted for a lethal drug error in 2017, was convicted of gross neglect of an impaired grownup and negligent murder on Friday following a a few-day trial in Nashville, Tenn., that gripped nurses across the place.

Vaught faces a few to six yrs in prison for neglect and one to two several years for negligent homicide as a defendant with no prior convictions, in accordance to sentencing recommendations delivered by the Nashville district attorney’s place of work. Vaught is scheduled to be sentenced Might 13, and her sentences are most likely to operate concurrently, stated the district attorney’s spokesperson, Steve Hayslip.

Vaught was acquitted of reckless murder. Criminally negligent murder was a lesser charge integrated below reckless homicide.

Vaught’s demo has been intently watched by nurses and health care gurus throughout the U.S., quite a few of whom fret it could set a precedent of criminalizing healthcare blunders. Clinical errors are usually managed by specialist licensing boards or civil courts, and prison prosecutions like Vaught’s situation are exceedingly exceptional.

Janie Harvey Garner, the founder of Display Me Your Stethoscope, a nursing group on Facebook with much more than 600,000 members, problems the conviction will have a chilling impact on nurses disclosing their have problems or near errors, which could have a detrimental effect on the high-quality of affected individual care.

“Wellness care just modified eternally,” she reported immediately after the verdict. “You can no extended have confidence in people today to inform the real truth due to the fact they will be incriminating them selves.”

In the wake of the verdict, the American Nurses Affiliation issued a assertion expressing related considerations about Vaught’s conviction, stating it sets a “perilous precedent” of “criminalizing the straightforward reporting of faults.” Some health care mistakes are “inescapable,” the assertion explained, and there are much more “productive and just mechanisms” to tackle them than legal prosecution.

“The nursing job is previously really shorter-staffed, strained and going through huge tension — an unfortunate multi-calendar year craze that was even more exacerbated by the consequences of the pandemic,” the assertion explained. “This ruling will have a extensive-lasting unfavorable effects on the occupation.”

Vaught, 38, of Bethpage, Tenn., was arrested in 2019 and charged with reckless homicide and gross neglect of an impaired grownup in relationship with the killing of Charlene Murphey, who died at Vanderbilt University Health-related Heart in late December 2017. The neglect demand stemmed from allegations that Vaught did not properly observe Murphey after she was injected with the incorrect drug.

Murphey, 75, of Gallatin, Tenn., was admitted to Vanderbilt for a mind personal injury. At the time of the mistake, her condition was bettering, and she was remaining well prepared for discharge from the healthcare facility, in accordance to courtroom testimony and a federal investigation report. Murphey was approved a sedative, Versed, to calm her just before staying scanned in a substantial MRI-like machine.

Vaught was tasked to retrieve Versed from a computerized treatment cupboard but alternatively grabbed a effective paralyzer, vecuronium. In accordance to an investigation report submitted in her courtroom case, the nurse neglected several warning signs as she withdrew the improper drug — which include that Versed is a liquid but vecuronium is a powder — and then injected Murphey and remaining her to be scanned. By the time the error was discovered, Murphey was mind-useless.

In the course of the demo, prosecutors painted Vaught as an irresponsible and uncaring nurse who overlooked her coaching and deserted her affected individual. Assistant District Lawyer Chad Jackson likened Vaught to a drunk driver who killed a bystander but said the nurse was “even worse” because it was as if she ended up “driving with [her] eyes shut.”

“The immutable simple fact of this situation is that Charlene Murphey is lifeless because RaDonda Vaught could not trouble to shell out focus to what she was executing,” Jackson stated.

Vaught’s attorney, Peter Strianse, argued that his shopper created an sincere miscalculation that did not represent a criminal offense and became a “scapegoat” for systemic issues related to treatment cupboards at Vanderbilt University Clinical Center in 2017.

But Vanderbilt officers countered on the stand. Terry Bosen, Vanderbilt’s pharmacy medicine basic safety officer, testified that the hospital had some technological troubles with medicine cabinets in 2017 but that they were settled weeks just before Vaught pulled the mistaken drug for Murphey.

In his closing argument, Strianse qualified the reckless murder charge, arguing that his client could not have “recklessly” disregarded warning signals if she earnestly thought she experienced the suitable drug and saying there was “considerable debate” more than no matter whether vecuronium really killed Murphey.

For the duration of the trial, Eli Zimmerman, a Vanderbilt neurologist, testified it was “in the realm of probability” that Murphey’s death was prompted entirely by her brain injuries. Furthermore, Davidson County Chief Healthcare Examiner Feng Li testified that although he determined Murphey died from vecuronium, he could not confirm how substantially of the drug she truly obtained. Li explained a small dose could not have been deadly.

“I don’t suggest to be facetious,” Strianse mentioned of the health-related examiner’s testimony, “but it kind of sounded like some amateur CSI episode — only with out the science.”

Vaught did not testify. On the next day of the trial, prosecutors played an audio recording of Vaught’s interview with law enforcement officials in which she admitted to the drug mistake and said she “possibly just killed a patient.”

For the duration of a independent continuing just before the Tennessee Board of Nursing very last year, Vaught testified that she allowed herself to turn into “complacent” and “distracted” when making use of the medicine cupboard and did not double-look at which drug she experienced withdrawn irrespective of numerous chances.

“I know the reason this patient is no longer here is for the reason that of me,” Vaught instructed the nursing board, starting up to cry. “There will never ever be a working day that goes by that I don’t assume about what I did.”

KHN (Kaiser Well being Information) is a nationwide newsroom that provides in-depth journalism about health and fitness issues. It is an editorially impartial operating software of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation).