>> What? >> To the idea
of equal justice.
>> What?
Okay.
>> Male Reporter: RaDonda Vaught, the nurse on trial
who was convicted today for a patient's death.
>> Female Reporter: The jury found her a guilty
of criminally negligent homicide.
>> Vaught mixed up medication
when treating patient Charlene Murphy
who was hospital at Vanderbilt for a brain bleed.
They concerned about the precedent
this could set for nurses that make mistakes on the job.
>> Yeah, we spoke with some of those nurses
after the verdict and some of them just said
they did not want to go on camera,
they didn't even want to give us their names
out of fear of retaliation from the state
but they were visibly shaken saying this decision
will change the profession of nursing forever.
>> The vast majority of nurses really feel like I am RaDonda,
I could be RaDonda.
This could happen to me
>> Impression that society doesn't support us,
that the judicial system doesn't support us.
And this is supposed to be
one of the most noble professions.
And if your society and community doesn't support you,
then what's the point in doing it?
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>> Hello friends, welcome back to my channel.
If you don't know me, my name is Kristina Braley
and I'm a board certified anesthesiologist,
the CEO of Cloud9 Scrubs and a content creator.
On this channel, we explore products
and gain knowledge and wisdom that help us live happier,
more fulfilled, more productive lives.
Let's get into this video.
In today's video, I'm going to react to
the verdict of the RaDonda Vaught trial.
Now, this is something
that I must have been living under a rock
because I really hadn't heard of it until today,
which apparently the verdict is being announced.
And so I'm going to respond to that
and we will talk about the consequences,
guilty or not guilty based on the verdict.
You're going to see my true honest reaction.
And then we'll talk a little bit about the implication
of a guilty verdict versus a not guilty verdict.
I would expect a not guilty verdict in this scenario
but let's go ahead and get started.
I would expect a not guilty verdict
For context, RaDonda Vaught is a Nashville nurse,
Nashville based nurse, who in 2017
accidentally administered a lethal dose of Vecuronium
which is a paralyzing agent that we use in anesthesia
and is also used in the critical care setting
to relax the muscles of patients who are on a ventilator.
Now she accidentally administered vecuronium
instead of versed.
Now you notice there are the similarity
between the two names of these drugs, both starting with ve.
There are a lot of nuances here to this trial
and to this case.
And so I'm not privy to any of that.
I haven't been following the trial,
but I have been reading up on it as far as
what's been going on over the last few weeks.
And so bearing in mind that anything I'm saying
is not from any position of a privilege of knowledge
other than my own experience
and what I'm seeing in the news
being reported the same as you.
I'm not aware of any nuanced things,
like if there was a preexisting,
I don't know, I'm just making stuff up at this point
but like let's say she had a grudge against the patient
and it was murder,
then maybe a guilty verdict would be reasonable,
but I'm just going to approach this
from the benefit of the doubt,
a nurse taking care of a patient who made a mistake.
And we're going to talk about the systems in place,
the processes and why this trial is,
first of all, the fact that there's even a trial
is very interesting to me because usually medical mistakes
and accidental medical mistakes,
although unfortunately, very common because we are human,
they're usually not criminally prosecuted.
Now on this channel, you might remember,
I responded to Dr. Death, the Dallas-based neurosurgeon
who was convicted criminally of assault,
mame and murder of many, many patients.
And so that is kind of a different ballgame.
We're we're not talking about someone who knowingly went
and did things to people knowing that they were
doing the things that they were doing.
We're talking about, presumably in this case,
a situation where this Nashville nurse
was taking out medication, that she thought was versed
and accidentally gave vecuronium,
which is a paralyzing agent.
Last thing, a bit of context
before I start reacting, vecuronium is a paralytic.
We say paralytic, but what it really does is
overwhelmingly relax all of the muscles,
all of the skeletal muscles in particular
and that includes the diaphragm.
So if I give you vecuronium and you are not intubated,
I need to intubate you very, very quickly,
otherwise you're going to undergo cardiac arrest
and you're going to undergo cardiac arrest
because the heart is starved of oxygen
because your diaphragm is paralyzed
and you can no longer breathe.
So in this situation, horrific,
okay, let's just get that out of the way,
horrific way to die.
Really, really nasty way to die
because you are completely presumably aware,
assuming she didn't have any other sedating
or hypnotic medications on board,
we can assume that this lady perished fully conscious
in her mind, but anyway, unable to move, which is terrifying
until she lost consciousness during cardiac arrest.
There's no doubt that this is a horrific situation
but I'm going to go ahead
and react to the verdict right now, live on camera.
>> [Female Jury Member] We the jury
find the defendant dominantly involved
guilty of gross neglect of an impaired adult.
>> Judge: As to count two, what is the jury's verdict?
>> [Female Jury Member] Guilty
of criminally negligent homicide.
>> Judge: You may be seated.
>> What?
>> Ideal of equal justice?
>> What?
Okay.
Let's talk about this.
She was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide.
I am no lawyer, so I'm not going to speak
as to my understanding of what that means
for her sentencing wise or what the implications are,
maybe any lawyers out there can chime in.
This is bad.
And I'm going to tell you why.
It is for sure obvious that the horror of
committing a mistake accidentally or otherwise
that results in the death of another human being
is horrific.
We can all acknowledge that
and let's make sure that that is very clear here,
because when it comes to this case,
there is no happy ending here.
What we have is a tragic death of an innocent patient
at the hands of a nurse who made a mistake.
I think that the public's tendency,
or perhaps the layperson not in medicine will tend to think,
yeah, any there's too many medical mistakes by doctors
and nurses in healthcare,
too many patients are dying from healthcare mistakes.
And you know, this is justified.
Let me be very clear
about the consequences of naming healthcare workers guilty
whenever they make a mistake that results in harm
or accidental death of a patient.
We have a very particular set of protocols
in modern healthcare, especially here in the United States
which is what I can speak to only.
And that is internal processes
that create a safe space for transparency,
for admitting to mistakes, for reporting errors,
for owning up to a mistake you made
without fear of criminalization,
that helps create a safer healthcare environment
for the next patient like you.
If you take all of those safety nets away,
and this is not covering up anything,
I'm not speaking to whether or not stuff was covered up,
I read somewhere that the hospital
or medical system healthcare system there
had not reported the mistake or something,
like I'm not speaking to that,
because everything should be upfront, should be reported,
communicated to the patients and the patient's family
regardless of what outcome has happened,
I believe in full transparency,
but also you have to in a way
create this safe space internally
that allows an employee like a nurse to report their mistake
without fear of being punished unjustly
or without fear of being arrested like in this case,
because what's going to happen?
The truth is, medical mistakes happen
because to air is human.
And every process that we have in place
to keep patients safe in the healthcare environment
are the direct result of processes and systems changing
because mistakes were reported in a safe space
that allowed for discourse, that allowed for review,
that allowed for an analysis of the problem
so that a solution can be found
to prevent that mistake from ever happening again.
For example, in the hospitals
that I have worked at historically,
paralytics will be labeled
with a bright orange label over the top
that usually says, "Paralyzing Agent" to remind someone,
hey, don't accidentally inject this
unless you're really, really meaning to.
In this case, I think it's safe to say
that was not a system that was in place
when it comes to that hospital.
But guess why those things exist?
They exist because mistakes have happened tragically,
unfortunately, regrettably that have resulted
in widespread sweeping changes to either that hospital,
the hospital system or the nation in general.
So when you remove this safe zone
of being able to own up to your mistakes
so that changes can be made
that impact patient safety for the future.
Then what you have is a tendency to cover up, to lie,
to hide the error, and then you never get any truth
or transparency to the patient or the patient's family.
You're never going to get that again.
You're also an never going to get honest reporting from a nurse
or any other healthcare worker,
because it's human not to want to do that.
Let's say there will be some good people out there
that will do it because it's the right thing to do.
Even in the face of criminalization.
Overwhelming majority are going to fear losing their jobs,
their livelihood, going to jail,
never seeing their family again, things like that.
And the long term consequence of this
besides destroying the systems in place that help impact
and develop patient safety protocols
is that you are going to have an already struggling,
drowning, failing healthcare workforce
that is overwhelmingly understaffed.
Now you're going to actually diminish
the number of people that want to go into healthcare
because let's put it this way,
let's say you want to work at a frozen yogurt shop.
I'm going to really simplify this here.
You want to work at a frozen yogurt shop.
Your job is to serve
and hand over frozen yogurt to hungry customers
who are just looking for some good frozen yogurt.
And one day,
maybe something failed with the temperature sensor
and it got a little bit too warm and staff
or E. coli started growing, something like that.
Let's say a bacteria starts to develop in that machine
and you don't know it.
And you dispense some frozen yogurt
and you hand it to someone who's,
I don't know, immunocompromised.
And you say, have a nice day.
Thank you so much, take their money, they go,
and they die from sepsis or meningitis or something.
Okay, random scenario.
But now, because of this precedent
with the RaDonda Vaught trial,
technically you could be arrested
criminally negligent homicide of a customer.
Now how many people are going to apply
for jobs to work in a frozen yogurt shop, right?
When your job, the result of you doing the job as described,
when you make a mistake, you could go to jail.
This is a big deal
because it has repercussions that will echo into the future
when it comes to precedent,
which is the basis of the legal system to my understanding,
and what that means for healthcare workers, nurses, doctors,
techs, anybody who's working, these are high stakes jobs
and you have to be able to have systems in place
that allow for honest transparent reporting
so that changes can be made to the system,
so that we can continue to perfect the healthcare.
Healthcare as a whole is far safer now
than it ever was historically.
I know there are still mistakes being made all the time.
And yes, there are bad actors
who do really terrible things on purpose.
We've all seen them.
They make it to the news, but far and away,
the millions of healthcare workers out there
are not doing this to intentionally harm people.
Based on what I'm seeing here,
a number of nurses have signed petitions
to grant clemency to RaDonda Vaught,
and mind you, granting clemency
or hoping for a not guilty verdict
doesn't make the patient's death any less meaningful
or any less tragic.
Regardless, any death is tragic
and any healthcare worker who's experienced a death
in healthcare will tell you that very thing.
I don't want people to think that
any of us hoping for a not guilty verdict
means that we don't care about the fact that a patient died
as a result of a medication error.
That's awful.
We acknowledge that,
it's terrible, it's tragic, it's horrific,
it's something I would hope would never happen to me
a healthcare worker.
But regardless, what we are all thinking about
is the precedent that it sets very dangerously
for the future of healthcare,
for the future of patient safety,
and for the future of every other healthcare worker
who's in school right now,
or, you know, wants to become a nurse
or wants to become a doctor, what are the implications?
And it's something that we really need to be aware of.
And I hope that this explains a little bit of that for you.
And it's definitely the verdict I did not want to hear
in this case.
Thanks so much for watching.
Let's chime in, in the comments down below.
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