Former Nurse Found Guilty of Criminally Negligent Homicide After Giving Patient Wrong Medication

A former nurse has been found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in Tennessee Court after giving a patient a paralyzing drug instead of a sedative.

RaDonda Vaught, 37, was also found guilty of gross neglect of an impaired adult, and found not guilty of reckless homicide, after giving a patient vecuronium instead of Versed in 2017. The switch ended up being a fatal one for 75-year-old Charlene Murphey after she suffered from a brain bleed days later.

Several nurses came to the courthouse in Tennessee to support Vaught, whose defense argued that the death was partly due to systemic problems at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

“Ms. Murphey’s family is at the forefront of my thoughts every day,” the former nurse said after the verdict was read. “You don’t do something that impacts a family like this, that impacts a life, and not carry that burden with you.”

Vaught ended up giving the wrong drug to Murphey after she couldn’t locate Versed in an automatic drug dispensing cabinet and decided to use an override, per the Associated Press. She then grabbed vecuronium, and an expert at the trial claims she violated several standards, including not reading the label, not spotting the red warning on the drug, and not waiting with the patient after administering the drug. Vaught now faces 3 to 6 years in jail on the gross neglect charge and up to 2 years on the criminally negligent homicide conviction.

“RaDonda Vaught acted recklessly, and Charlene Murphey died as a result of that. RaDonda Vaught had a duty of care to Charlene Murphey and RaDonda Vaught neglected that,” Assistant District Attorney Chadwick Jackson said to the jury. “The immutable fact of this case is that Charlene Murphey is dead because RaDonda Vaught couldn’t pay attention to what she was doing.”

Others like patient safety expert Bruce Lambert said that the verdict would “not only cause nurses and doctors to not report medication errors, it will cause nurses to leave the profession.”