RaDonda Vaught, a former Vanderbilt University Medical Center nurse accused of the death of a patient, listens to the opening comments during her trial on Tuesday, March 22, 2022, at the Justice A.A. Birch Building in Nashville, Tenn.
Vaught was charged with reckless murder after unintentionally giving Charlene Murphey, 75, the paralyzing medicine vecuronium instead of the sedative Versed on December 26, 2017.
RaDonda Vaught found guilty in death of patient https://t.co/sciDN9cfPh
— USeducation Service (@educationaspect) March 25, 2022
The facts of Murphey’s death were first exposed in a November report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which said that if Vanderbilt did not take actions to prevent such mishaps, the federal government would suspend the hospital’s Medicare reimbursement payments.
Vaught recognized her mistake as soon as she noticed it, and the state medical board took no action against her at the time.
Vaught, according to prosecutors, made many mistakes that day and “recklessly disobeyed” her instruction.
For charges of reckless killing and maltreatment of an incapacitated adult, RaDonda Vaught risks a sentence of more than ten years in prison.
Murphey was brought to the hospital two days before for a headache and visual loss in one eye.
TN v. Radonda Vaught Trial – Day 3 #RaDondaVaught #CharleneMurphy https://t.co/ctpwSmAFTx
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According to evidence, physicians ordered a PET scan on the 26th to check for malignancy, but Murphey was claustrophobic and requested medicine to ease her fear.
Vaught claims she was “distracted” when she overrode a safety mechanism on the automatic drug dispenser, which she claims failed to detect a number of red signals between the time she retrieved the medication and the time she provided it to the patient.
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