Nurses protest Tennessee sentence for deadly medical mistake

Demonstrators gather outside the courthouse where the sentencing hearing for former nurse RaDonda Vaught is being held in Nashville, Tenn., on May 13, 2022. (Mark Humphrey / AP)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -

A former Tennessee nurse whose medication error killed a patient was sentenced to three years of probation Friday as hundreds of health care workers rallied outside the courthouse, warning that criminalizing such mistakes will lead to more deaths in hospitals.

A state judge imposed the sentence on RaDonda Vaught after she apologized to relatives of the victim, Charlene Murphey, and said she'll be forever haunted by her mistake. Vaught was found guilty in March of criminally negligent homicide and gross neglect of an impaired adult after she accidentally administered the wrong medication.

Nashville Criminal Court Judge Jennifer Smith said Vaught would receive judicial diversion, a way for first-time offenders to have their charges dropped and their records expunged after successfully completing probation. Prosecutors had argued against diversion, although they were not opposed to probation.

The crowd of nurses outside protesting cheered, cried and hugged after hearing the sentence. The relief came after the health care workers spent hours in the sun and cling onto every word of the judge's lengthy sentencing explanation for several minutes, some linked in a chain with hands locked.

The fact that she faced any criminal penalties at all has become a rallying point for many nurses who were already fed up with poor working conditions exacerbated by the pandemic. The crowd outside listened to the sentencing through loudspeakers and cheered when some of the victim's relatives said they wouldn't want jail time for Vaught.

“Knowing my mom the way my mom was and stuff, she wouldn't want to see her serve no jail time. That's just Mom. Mom was a very forgiving person,” Michael Murphey told the court. Charlene Murphey's husband, however, does want her to serve a prison sentence, relatives testified.

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

“I'll be forever haunted by my role in her untimely passing,” she said. “She did not deserve that.”

Vaught also apologized that discussion of systemic hospital problems and the danger of criminalizing mistakes by health care workers took some attention away from Charlene Murphey.

“I'm sorry that this public outpouring of support for me has caused you to continue to live this over and over,” she told them. “No one has forgotten about your loved one, no one has forgotten about Ms. Murphey. We're all horribly, horribly sorry for what happened.”

Some health care workers have left bedside nursing for administrative positions, while others quit the profession altogether, saying the risk of going to prison for a mistake has made nursing intolerable. Wearing purple T-shirts reading “#IAmRaDonda” and “Seeking Justice for Nurses and Patients in a BROKEN system,” they listened to speeches from other nurses and supporters.

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

“Never in my 14 years have I felt so helpless,” she said. “This could be me.”

Ellison said the outcome could determine whether she stays in nursing. She said she 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 over from Memphis, said she became a nurse practitioner several years ago because “bedside was getting dangerous. ... There were never enough nurses.”

“I usually don't do things like this,” she said of the protest. “I'm just so passionate about it. Nurses are going to go to jail and more people are going to die because they won't report their errors.”

Vaught reported her error as soon as she realized what she had done wrong.

Vaught, 38, injected the paralyzing drug vecuronium instead of the sedative Versed into 75-year-old Charlene Murphey on Dec. 26, 2017. Vaught admitted making several errors that led to the fatal injection, but her defense attorney argued that systemic problems at Vanderbilt University Medical Center were at least partly to blame.

The state's expert witness argued at trial that Vaught violated the standard of care expected of nurses. In addition to grabbing the wrong medicine, she failed to read the name of the drug, did not notice a red warning on the top of the medication, and did not stay with the patient to check for an adverse reaction, nurse legal consultant Donna Jones said.

Leanna Craft, a nurse educator at the neurological intensive care unit where Vaught worked, testified that it was common for nurses at that time to override the system to get drugs. The hospital had recently updated an electronic records system, which led to delays in retrieving medications. There was also no scanner in the imaging area for Vaught to scan the medication against the patient's ID bracelet.

The jury found Vaught not guilty of reckless homicide. Criminally negligent homicide was a lesser offense included under the original charge.

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Contributors include Associated Press writer Jonathan Mattise in Nashville