Nashville, Tennessee – A former Tennessee nurse whose treatment error killed a patient was sentenced to three years in prison on Friday as hundreds of health workers gathered in front of the courthouse, warning that criminalizing such mistakes would lead to more deaths in hospitals.
A U.S. judge has sentenced Radonda Vott after she apologized to the victim’s relatives, Charlene Murphy, and said she would be haunted forever by her mistake. Vout was found guilty in March of negligent homicide and gross neglect of an adult with a disability after accidentally administering the wrong medication.
Nashville Criminal Court Judge Jennifer Smith said Vaught would receive a waiver, a way for the offenders to drop their charges for the first time and have their files deleted after the probation was successfully completed. Prosecutors challenged the diversion, although they were not against probation.
The crowd of nurses outside, protesting, applauded, cried and hugged after hearing the verdict. Relief came after health workers spent hours in the sun and clung to every word of the judge’s lengthy explanation, some tied in a chain with their hands locked.
The fact that the 38-year-old Vaught has faced all kinds of criminal penalties has become a unifying point for many nurses who are tired of the poor working conditions worsened by the pandemic. The crowd outside listened to the hearing through loudspeakers and applauded when some of the victim’s relatives said they would not want Vout jailed.
Former nurse RaDonda Vaught responded after being sentenced to three years of controlled probation in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 13, 2022. Nicole Hester / The Tennessean via AP, Pool
“Knowing my mother, what my mother was like, and so on, she wouldn’t want to see her serve time in prison. It’s just mom. Mom was a very forgiving person, “Michael Murphy told the court. However, Charlene Murphy’s husband wanted her to serve a prison sentence, according to relatives.
Vot apologized to the family in court, saying the words would never fully express her “remorse and grief.”
“I will be forever haunted by my role in her untimely death,” she said. “She didn’t deserve it.”
When weighing whether to allow Vaught to be acquitted, Smith cites Vaught’s remorse, as well as her honesty about the treatment error.
Speaking before being convicted, Vaught apologized to Murphy’s family if the discussion of systemic hospital problems and the danger of criminalizing mistakes diverted some attention from the death of their loved one.
“I’m sorry that this public outpouring of support for me has made you keep living this over and over again,” she told them. “No one has forgotten about your loved one, no one has forgotten about Mrs. Murphy. We are all terribly, terribly sorry for what happened. “
Nashville Criminal Court Judge Jennifer Smith announced that RaDonda Vaught’s case file could be deleted at the end of her probation. Nicole Hester / The Tennessean via AP, Pool
After Vaught was found guilty in March, health workers began posting on social media that they were leaving nurses by the bed for administrative positions or even leaving the profession altogether. They said the risk of going to jail for a mistake made breastfeeding unbearable.
On Friday, Vaught supporters wore purple T-shirts with the words “#IAmRaDonda” and “Seeking Justice for Nursers and Patients in a BROKEN system” while listening to speeches by other nurses and supporters. They also observed a minute of silence in memory of Charlene Murphy.
Alais Ellison travels from Texas to join them. A nurse in the emergency department for 14 years, she said she cried when Vaught was found guilty.
Healthcare workers protest Radonda’s probation in front of the Nashville Courthouse on May 13, 2022. AP Photo / Mark Humphrey
“I have never felt so helpless in my 14 years,” she said. “It could be me.” She came to Nashville to “inform the world that criminalizing a mistake, an honest mistake, is not the direction we want to go.”
Jane Reed, who arrived by car from Memphis, said she became a nurse practitioner a few years ago because “it was dangerous to go to bed.” “There have never been enough nurses.”
“I don’t usually do things like that,” she said of the protest. “I am just so passionate about it. Nurses will go to jail and more people will die because they will not report their mistakes. “
Vaught reported her mistake as soon as she realized what she had done wrong – she injected the paralyzing drug vecuronium instead of the sedative Versed on 75-year-old Charlene Murphy on December 26, 2017. Vaught admitted that she made several mistakes that led to the fatal injection, but her Advocate argues that systemic problems at Vanderbilt University Medical Center are at least partly to blame.
Rhonda Murphy talks about the loss of her mother-in-law Charlene Murphy during the hearing of Radonda Vote. Nicole Hester-USA TODAY NETWORK / Sipa USA
Speaking at Friday’s hearing, Michael Murphy spoke about the effects of his mother’s death on the family.
“I was at work when it all happened, so I couldn’t say goodbye to my mother. I couldn’t hug or kiss her, “he said. “My father suffers from this every day. He goes to the cemetery once or twice a week. He goes out there and cries. He is 83 years old. ”
His wife, Chandra Murphy, also testified on Friday about the way things were before her mother-in-law died.
“We always got together for family dinners,” she said. “We did so much together as a family and it just ended in a split second for us. We still have her Christmas presents on our ceiling packed.
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