Nurse convicted of felonies for fatal medication error receives sentence

RaDonda Vaught, a previous Tennessee nurse convicted of two felonies for a deadly drug error, whose trial became a rallying cry for nurses fearful of the criminalization of health-related issues, was sentenced Friday.

Davidson County prison court docket Choose Jennifer Smith on Friday granted Vaught a judicial diversion, which signifies her conviction will be expunged if she completes a 3-calendar year probation. She will not be essential to shell out any time in prison.

Vaught admitted her error right after her treatment blend-up was learned, and her defense largely centered on arguments that an trustworthy miscalculation should really not constitute a criminal offense. Nurses across the place protested she ought to not be prosecuted.

Smith explained that the loved ones of the affected individual who died as a outcome of Vaught’s mistake suffered a “terrible loss” and “nothing that occurs in this article today can relieve that decline.”

“Miss Vaught is very well informed of the seriousness of the offense,” Smith mentioned. “She credibly expressed remorse in this courtroom.”

The choose noted that Vaught experienced no criminal document, has been taken out from the wellbeing care placing, and will under no circumstances practice nursing once again. The judge also mentioned, “This was a terrible, terrible mistake and there have been implications to the defendant.”

As the sentence was read through, cheers erupted from a group of hundreds of purple-clad protesters who collected outdoors the courthouse in opposition to Vaught’s prosecution.

Vaught, 38, a former nurse at Vanderbilt College Professional medical Center in Nashville, confronted up to 8 several years in jail. In March she was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and gross neglect of an impaired adult for the 2017 dying of 75-calendar year-previous individual Charlene Murphey. Murphey was prescribed Versed, a sedative, but Vaught inadvertently gave her a deadly dose of vecuronium, a highly effective paralyzer.

Charlene Murphey’s son, Michael Murphey, testified at Friday’s sentencing listening to that his household stays devastated by the sudden demise of their matriarch. She was “a really forgiving person” who would not want Vaught to provide any prison time, he explained, but his widower father wanted Murphey to acquire “the maximum sentence.”

“My dad suffers every single day from this,” Michael Murphey reported. “He goes out to the graveyard 3 to four times a 7 days and just sits out there and cries.”

Vaught’s situation stands out since health care glitches ― even fatal ones ― are normally in just the purview of state medical boards, and lawsuits are just about hardly ever prosecuted in legal court docket.

The Davidson County district attorney’s office environment, which did not advocate for any unique sentence or oppose probation, has explained Vaught’s scenario as an indictment of a person careless nurse, not the complete nursing profession. Prosecutors argued in demo that Vaught overlooked numerous warning signals when she grabbed the incorrect drug, such as failing to see Versed is a liquid and vecuronium is a powder.

During the hearing on Friday, Vaught reported she was endlessly transformed by Murphey’s death and was “open and honest” about her mistake in an exertion to avert future issues by other nurses. Vaught also claimed there was no community interest in sentencing her to prison mainly because she could not maybe re-offend following her nursing license was revoked.

“I have shed much extra than just my nursing license and my career. I will by no means be the identical particular person,” Vaught stated, her voice quivering as she commenced to cry. “When Ms. Murphey died, a portion of me died with her.”

At 1 place throughout her assertion, Vaught turned to face Murphey’s family, apologizing for both of those the fatal error and how the general public campaign from her prosecution may well have forced the spouse and children to relive their decline.

“You really don’t should have this,” Vaught said. “I hope it does not arrive across as folks forgetting your beloved just one. … I feel we are just in the middle of devices that do not recognize one yet another.”

Prosecutors also argued at trial that Vaught circumvented safeguards by switching the hospital’s computerized treatment cupboard into “override” method, which made it achievable to withdraw remedies not approved to Murphey, like vecuronium. Other nurses and nursing professionals have instructed KHN that overrides are routinely applied in many hospitals to accessibility treatment immediately.

Theresa Collins, a travel nurse from Ga who closely followed the trial, explained she will no longer use the characteristic, even if it delays patients’ care, right after prosecutors argued it proved Vaught’s recklessness.

“I’m not likely to override anything at all over and above basic saline. I just really do not feel at ease doing it any more,” Collins said. “When you criminalize what well being care staff do, it improvements the entire ballgame.”

Vaught’s prosecution drew condemnation from nursing and health-related organizations that said the case’s perilous precedent would worsen the nursing lack and make nurses considerably less forthcoming about errors.

The circumstance also spurred appreciable backlash on social media as nurses streamed the trial through Facebook and rallied behind Vaught on TikTok. That outrage inspired Friday’s protest in Nashville, which drew supporters from as significantly as Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Nevada.

Amid those protesters was David Peterson, a nurse who marched Thursday in Washington, D.C., to demand wellness care reforms and safer nurse-affected person staffing ratios, then drove by means of the night to Nashville and slept in his vehicle so he could protest Vaught’s sentencing. The activities were being inherently intertwined, he claimed.

“The items being protested in Washington, methods in position since of poor staffing in hospitals, that’s particularly what happened to RaDonda. And it places every nurse at threat each and every working day,” Peterson stated. “It’s induce and impact.”

Tina Vinsant, a Knoxville nurse and podcaster who structured the Nashville protest, explained the team experienced spoken with Tennessee lawmakers about laws to guard nurses from legal prosecution for clinical glitches and would go after comparable charges “in every point out.”

Vinsant claimed they would go after this marketing campaign even even though Vaught was not despatched to jail.

“She should not have been charged in the initially position,” Vinsant claimed. “I want her not to serve jail time, of program, but the sentence does not really have an impact on in which we go from right here.”

Janis Peterson, a not long ago retired ICU nurse from Massachusetts, reported she attended the protest immediately after recognizing in Vaught’s circumstance the all-also-common worries from her personal nursing job. Peterson’s worry was a prevalent refrain amid nurses: ” It could have been me.”

“And if it was me, and I looked out that window and observed 1,000 folks who supported me, I’d sense greater,” she said. “Because for each individual a single of people 1,000, there are in all probability 10 far more who assist her but couldn’t come.”

Nashville General public Radio’s Blake Farmer contributed to this report.