Vaught, who is 38, was indicted in 2019 on two charges, reckless homicide and impaired adult abuse. Vanderbilt University Medical Center (FOX 17 News) NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) A Vanderbilt nurse made a deadly error and now the hospital has taken steps to ensure it MORE:Vanderbilt didnt tell medical examiner about deadly medication error, feds say. Murphey went into cardiac arrest and died on Dec. 27, 2017. hDO]K@-H/T(ihE>zy)?NLTI&yIz?MmL_\Az;N[3-jt%aB!CQw G-35k&O&X5Zk.akkN4 Nashvilles District Attorney General Glenn Funk, who brought the charges, is also an adjunct professor of law at Vanderbilt, which is the largest employer in the city. CMS officials are requiring Vanderbilt to submit a revised corrective plan by November 30. The Nursing and The Law program from Nash Healthcare Consulting (NHC) covers hot topics involving nursing challenges including problematic nursing chapter standards with CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) and the Joint Commission (TJC). She is due in court on Feb. 20. An estimated 7,000 to 9,000 people die each year in the US because of medication errors, and hundreds of thousands of adverse events are gone unreported. If you are going to do that, you should put all of the administrators at Vanderbiltwho are overseeing her, who are overseeing safety, who are responsible for communicating with CMS and with the patientthey should all go to jail.. 20052022 MedPage Today, LLC, a Ziff Davis company. Workers are burned out and deeply exhausted by staffing shortages and additional burdens being forced on them, barely keeping the entire infrastructure from collapsing. Nurses are watching this case and are rightfully concerned that it will set a dangerous precedent. When requested, information sent to ISMP can be privileged and protected, Mr. Cohen noted. The CMS is threatening to strip Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, of its ability to care for Medicare patients because a patient died after receiving a large dose of the wrong medication. Brett Kelman is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. On March 25, 2022, RaDonda Vaught, a nurse at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, was convicted of criminally negligent homicide for administering the incorrect medication to a patient . The report said someone should have stayed with Murphey after she received the drug in case of adverse reactions, which were not detected for 30 minutes, constituting "neglect" of the patient and violating her rights. A criminal investigation was also initiated, and Ms. Vaught was indicted in 2019 for reckless homicide (Class D felony) and physical abuse or gross neglect of an impaired NEW INFO:Vanderbilt nurse: Safeguards were overridden in medication error, prosecutors say. That's the view of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF), an arm of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), whose task force has issued a call to action to hospitals nationwide after studying the circumstances in the Vaught case. ANA cautions against accidental medical errors being tried in a court of law. Shes been a medical journalist for more than a decade and her work has been recognized by Barlett & Steele, AHCJ, SABEW, and others. /Length 2913 /PageMode /UseNone The state of Tennessee also revoked her nursing license. It's vecuronium.". /UR5j However, rather than addressing the underlying socioeconomic issues that are at the root of these tragic but preventable medical errors, the capitalist state criminalizes health care workers. Are you a nurse? On October 31, 2018, CMS conducted an unannounced on-site survey in response to the complaint. Medpage Today is among the federally registered trademarks of MedPage Today, LLC and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission. No Of those incidents, 1,970 (28%) involved medication adverse events and of those, 31% harmed a patient, mostly during the medication administration phase. In Institute for Safe MedicationPractices "That includes providing background information about the event itself, along with physical evidence, requested health records information and other documents.. That's when the incident became public. The physician responsible for contacting the Davidson County Medical Examiner failed to inform them that the cause of death was an inadvertent administration of a paralytic agent. It creates a culture of fear and inhibits learning and improvement and prevention of errors," he said. March 23, 2022. At this point, the report states, the medication error was discovered. Law enforcement announced earlier this week that ex-nurse Radonda Vaught, 35, of Bethpage, had been indicted for the 2017 death of Charlene Murphey, a 75-year-old woman who was left brain dead after being given the wrong medication at Vanderbilt. An emergency code was called, and after three rounds of chest compression, her heart rate and breathing returned. The system asked for a reason for the override, but she couldnt recall what reason she selected., Due to problems with communication between electronic health records, medication dispensing cabinets, and the hospital pharmacy that were causing delays in administering medications, the hospital was using workarounds that overrode the safeguards built into the medicine cabinets so staff could access drugs quickly when needed. The WSWS is organizing the working class to defend former Vanderbilt nurse RaDonda Vaught and all health care workers against victimization for the crisis of the for-profit health care system. The failure of the hospital to mitigate risks associated with medication errors and ensure all patients received care in a safe setting to protect their physical and emotional health and safety placed all patients in a SERIOUS and IMMEDIATE THREAT and placed them in IMMEDIATE JEOPARDY and risk of serious injuries and/or death. She was intubated and taken to the ICU. At Vanderbilt, "the override function allows the nurse to remove a medication from the machine before a pharmacist reviews the order," the CMS report stated. Three of the 153 events were life-threatening, 51 were significant, and 99 were serious. Massachusetts General Hospital researchers reviewed 277 operations over a 7-month period between 2013 and 2014. As you could tell from the CMS report, there were safeguards in place that were overridden, Hayslipsaid in an email statement. Sentinel events, serious patient safety incidents, have reached their highest level since reporting of them began. Testimony has begun in the trial in Nashville, Tennessee, of a former Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) nurse, RaDonda Vaught, for the death of a 75-year-old woman, Charlene Murphey, in late 2017. In a new advisory, the organization recommends that leaders make changes so mix-ups and missteps like those that killed 75-year-old Vanderbilt University Medical Center patient Charlene Murphey are nearly impossible. "The error occurred because a staff member had bypassed multiple safety mechanisms that were in place to prevent such errors," said Vanderbilt Spokesman John Howser. Dangerous medication errors are also found in pediatric care settings. However, when CMS confirmed that Vanderbilt did not report the fatal medication error, CMS went public with their findings the following month. The trial of a nurse facing criminal charges for a deadly medical error got underway in Nashville, Tennessee this week, and it's raising concerns among nurses about the precedent it could set -- particularly at a time when they're struggling with lingering burnout and exhaustion. Follow. (Vanderbilt Medical Center Photo by: Neil Brake)FeatureStand AloneSpring, 'Most childrens hospitals are struggling,' says John Nickens, president and CEO of Children's Hospital New Orleans, More healthcare organizations at risk of credit default, Moody's says, Centene fills out senior executive team with new president, COO, SCAN, CareOregon plan to merge into the HealthRight Group, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan unveils big push that lets physicians take on risk, reap rewards, Bright Health weighs reverse stock split as delisting looms. Kristina Fiore, Director of Enterprise & Investigative Reporting, MedPage Today A quality improvement initiative from the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia called Wake Up Safe analyzed 6 years of medication error events at 32 institutions. Certainly, criminalizing her mistake and charging her or any other nurse with negligent homicide and neglect was absolutely the wrong approach. Later that moth, CMS threatened to suspend Medicare payments if VUMC did not take immediate action to prevent similar future errors. She joined the prestigious Vanderbilt University Medical Center in October 2015. Please Watch short YouTube video first, length: 2:32, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) report is summarized here and the, events are described via interviews with the involved parties. A third strategy, he suggested, is for organizations to make sure their institutional culture does not "enable normalization of deviance," by which nurses and other practitioners normalize the process of finding workarounds, such as overriding safety blocks, to get things done. Medication Error Kills A Vanderbilt Patient | Incident Report 203 endstream endobj 289 0 obj <>stream The health care executives who have the final say in safety policies at Vanderbilt were found negligent by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, but they have not been held to account by the prosecutors office. The patient's doctor ordered 2 milligrams of the sedative Versed, but a nurse accidentally delivered vecuronium, an anesthetic. Vaught was fired from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in early January 2018, according to the CMS investigation. Beyond the personal aspects of these events, the prosecution of the nurse is sending waves of resentment among nurses who fear the trial will set a precedent. The CMS report states the, hospital failed to ensure patients' rights were protected to receive care in a safe setting and, implemented measures to mitigate risks of potential fatal medication errors to the patients. Vaught, who is out on bail, has declined to comment. She searched "VE" again and the cabinet produced the paralytic vecuronium. But before discharge, her doctors ordered a special scan in the radiology department that afternoon where she would be placed in an enclosed tube. Vaught, 36, of, 1. The authors suggested that using prefilled medication syringes would avoid accidental ampule swap, bar-coding at the point of administration would prevent syringe swaps and confirm proper doses, and two-person checking of medication infusions would provide greater assurance of accuracy. Opens in a new tab or window. %PDF-1.3 All rights reserved. Im sure it was not intentional. Over the next two days, her condition improved. /Filter [ /FlateDecode ] See who else is going to Nursing & Law Navigating Problematic Nursing Chapter Standards with CMS TJC, and keep up-to-date with conversations about the event. stream Use the form at the end of this article to sign up for the WSWS Health Care Workers Newsletter. Vecuronium Bromide is a potent paralytic used by an anesthesiologist when they perform intubation procedures, and the drug causes all the muscles to become paralyzed. VANDERBILT DEATH:Victim would forgive nurse who mixed up meds, son says. Sign up for the WSWS Health Care Workers Newsletter! There was no documentation in this policy detailing any procedure or guidance, regarding the manner and frequency of monitoring patients during and after medications were, Per CMS the Administration of midazolam (Versed) requires an experienced clinician trained in, the use of resuscitative equipment and skilled in airway managementMonitor patients for, early signs of respiratory insufficiency, respiratory depression, hypoventilation, airway, obstruction, or apnea (i.e., via pulse oximetry), which may lead to hypoxia and/or cardiac, At Vanderbilt, There was no documentation in this policy detailing any procedure or guidance, Access to our library of course-specific study resources, Up to 40 questions to ask our expert tutors, Unlimited access to our textbook solutions and explanations. At the time, Vaught was also orienting a new employee and was fielding questions about a swallow evaluation in the emergency department. The patient was left alone to be scanned for as long as 30 minutes, according to the investigation report, before someone realized the patient was not breathing and medical staff began CPR. ", "Transparent, just, and timely reporting mechanisms of medical errors without the fear of criminalization preserve safe patient care environments. By the definition of reckless,the defendants actions justify the charge.. The nurse then typed the first two letters in the drugs name VE into the cabinet computer and selected the first medicine suggested by the machine, not realizing it was vecuronium, not Versed. `` VE '' again and the cabinet produced the paralytic vecuronium the emergency department was also orienting a new and. Negligent homicide and impaired adult abuse Use the form at the end of this article to sign up for WSWS... 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