[Puffer Fish]

A nurse was criminally convicted because she accidentally administered the wrong medication which ended up causing that patient's death.

But criminally punishing nurses for mistakes could lead to the death of more patients.

If a nurse realizes that she has made a mistake, by reporting the mistake it could save the life of the patient. The doctors would immediately know what was wrong and how to try to treat the patient.
But if a nurse fears there may be criminal charges for her mistake, she might choose not to immediately tell anyone. If she doesn't tell anyone, they might not find out what caused the patient to die, or they might not know who it was who administered the medication.

Should nurses really be criminally punished for mistakes?
And even if punishing them means more patients will die who otherwise might not?

"
The moment nurse RaDonda Vaught realized she had given a patient the wrong medication, she rushed to the doctors working to revive 75-year-old Charlene Murphey and told them what she had done. Within hours, she made a full report of her mistake to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Murphey died the next day, on December 27, 2017. A jury found Vaught guilty of criminally negligent homicide and gross neglect.

That verdict - and the fact that Vaught was charged at all - worries patient safety and nursing groups that have worked for years to move hospital culture away from cover-ups, blame and punishment, and toward the honest reporting of mistakes.
"
Nurses: Guilty verdict for dosing mistake could cost lives - ABC News (go.com), Travis Loller, March 30, 2022
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory ... had%20done.

[Igor Antunov]

I was given over 500ml of Morphine by accident, by a 19 year old trainee nurse. Knocked me out for hours and I could see when I woke up they must have had to resuscitate me at one point because my blood pressure and heart rate had dropped to nothing according to the monitor history. Of course they all acted coy and calm about it but I know never to go to that hospital again. They had almost put me to sleep like a dog over a kidney stone. An average man would have died, luckily these metabolically active muscles paid off.

Should nurses really be criminally punished for mistakes?
And even if punishing them means more patients will die who otherwise might not?

Yes. There should be no room for negligence or oversight in this profession. Like being a truck driver. Take your eyes for 1.5 seconds off the road because you only slept 4 hours the night before, crash, kill someone, you rightly gonna get cooked.

[Puffer Fish]

I was given over 500ml of Morphine by accident, by a 19 year old trainee nurse.

I have heard that this is a big problem in Russian hospitals, that many of the nurses there (especially male nurses) show up to work drunk on the job, and this often leads to mistakes. Alcoholism is a chronic problem in Russian society, especially outside the major big city areas.
It's so common for nurses to show up partially drunk that many hospitals do not do anything about it and just accept it as almost normal. They have a shortage of nurses so there is pressure for them to just take what they can get.

[MadMonk]

As a nurse in training, nurses should absolutely be liable if there is gross misconduct with significant personal responsibility for mistakes they make. Termination of employment and revocation of license should be standard but criminal charges can and should be a possibility in certain cases.

Are there mitigating factors? Yes, circumstances outside of any medical practioners control such as work stress, failing safety procedures on a systemic level and so on. These should be reported and documented long before and even then the nurses will have a responsibility to their patients to ensure that treatment is not suffering. But with Covid and chronic shortages, it is almost impossible to ensure near perfect conditions all the time.

[Puffer Fish]

As a nurse in training, nurses should absolutely be liable if there is gross misconduct with significant personal responsibility for mistakes they make. Termination of employment and revocation of license should be standard but criminal charges can and should be a possibility in certain cases.

If you get too harsh and hold them 100% responsible for every mistake, I do wonder what effect that might have on the number of nurses who choose to enter the field. Maybe the nurses will demand higher pay in response, to compensate them for the occupational legal and financial risk. Or maybe the field will attract lower quality workers who are just more desperate for a job. In which case, that might even end up in mistakes becoming even more common.

[Igor Antunov]

I have heard that this is a big problem in Russian hospitals, that many of the nurses there (especially male nurses) show up to work drunk on the job, and this often leads to mistakes. Alcoholism is a chronic problem in Russian society, especially outside the major big city areas.
It's so common for nurses to show up partially drunk that many hospitals do not do anything about it and just accept it as almost normal. They have a shortage of nurses so there is pressure for them to just take what they can get.

This was in Australia, and nurses here are chronic alcoholics and insomniacs too. It's part of the profession culture.

[ThirdTerm]

Vaught injected the paralyzing drug vecuronium into 75-year-old Charlene Murphey instead of the sedative Versed on Dec. 26, 2017. Vecuronium is the drug used for the death penalty in the US. Vecuronium is usually given before general anesthesia in preparing you for surgery. Vecuronium is a nondepolarizing neuromuscular blocking agent used to relax muscles or as an adjunct in general anesthesia during surgical procedures. It could be intentional rather than an innocent mistake, given the circumstances. In another country, a male nurse was sentenced to life in prison for killing ten people by using vecuronium a decade ago.

TOKYO, JAN 10: At least 10 hospital patients were killed after being administered a lethal dose of a muscle relaxant by a male nurse, who was arrested on suspicion of attempting to kill an 11-year-old girl, news reports said on Wednesday.

Asahi Shimun newspaper, quoting police sources, said that the drug, vecuronium bromide, was administered intravenously by Daisuke Mori to 20 patients, 10 of whom died while another eight remain in a critical condition. The other two Hokuryo Clinic patients recovered from the potentially fatal doses. The report said Mori had admitted to attempting to murder the 11-year-old schoolgirl and also confessed to administering the drug to other patients.

At a Sunday’s news conference after the arrest of Mori, clinic’s vice director Ikuko Handa said she grew suspicious of the way the 11-year-old girl’s condition deteriorated. She consulted a forensic medicine expert in November and was told about the possibility of the use of muscle relaxant. She notified police in December. Handa also said she was aware of an ‘‘unnatural’’ fall in the hospital’s supply of muscle relaxant after the suspect began working there. Mori reportedly told police that he was not satisfied with his salary and working conditions and he wanted to put the hospital and its owners into great trouble.

[Puffer Fish]

Nurses were traveling from around the country to protest outside the courtroom in Nashville where a former Tennessee nurse was scheduled to be sentenced for causing the death of a patient.

Vaught's conviction has become a rallying point for many nurses who were already fed up with poor working conditions exacerbated by the pandemic. Some have left bedside nursing for administrative positions while others have left the profession all together, saying the risk of going to prison for a mistake has made nursing intolerable.​

Nurses to protest sentencing in Tennessee patient-death case - StarTribune.com
https://www.startribune.com/nurses-to-p ... 600172880/

[Puffer Fish]

Vaught injected the paralyzing drug vecuronium into 75-year-old Charlene Murphey instead of the sedative Versed on Dec. 26, 2017.
It could be intentional rather than an innocent mistake, given the circumstances.

[statement of attorney Glenn Funk regarding Redonda Vaught conviction]

I read all that. The statement describes things trying to make it seem that Vaught had to be extremely reckless to have given the wrong medication, but I do not believe that is the case. The prosecuting attorney is being extremely ignorant about actual realistic working conditions for nurses in hospitals.
Nurses are cutting corners all the time due to stress and excessive workloads.

I still see no evidence this was intentional or due to some outrageous act of recklessness.


In this case the prosecuting attorney in his paper seems to have expected the nurse to wait around and check the patient to see how the patient was doing. That is unrealistic, and the nurse would have no ordinary reason to do that.

[Thunderhawk]

The prosecuting attorney is being extremely ignorant about actual realistic working conditions for nurses in hospitals.
Nurses are cutting corners all the time due to stress and excessive workloads.

I still see no evidence this was intentional or due to some outrageous act of recklessness.

If the environment is stressful and under a time crunch, then higher standards are needed so people know what corners can be cut and how.