Charlene Murphey was a 75 year old patient, who was admitted into the Vanderbilt University Medical Center suffering a brain bleed on December 24, 2017. Only two days after she was admitted the doctors ordered a PET scan. Murphey however was severely claustrophobic and had high anxiety levels about the test. RaDonda Vaught was taking care of Murphey and before Murphey was supposed to take her test, she was supposed to administer an anxiety medication. She couldn’t find the specific anxiety medication that she needed from the automatic drug dispensing cabinet so she override the machine and dispensed what she thought was another anxiety medicine but in actuality it was a paralyzing drug instead. Murphey died the next day after the test on December 24, 2017.
Vaught was charged in 2019 because of the “worrisome implications of safety”. They charged her with criminally negligent homicide and abuse of an impaired adult. They found her guilty of those charges on March 27, 2022 and is set to be sentenced on May 13th.
Vaught released a statement saying that she has “zero regrets about telling the truth.” Many nurses stand by Vaught. They believe that this situation could’ve happened to any one of them because of how overworked and under staffed the nursing field is. The reason that she was charged to begin with, many believe that it is because the medical field, specifically hospitals are trying to move away from the all of the coverups and lies they tell when a medical mistake happens. This movement is called “Just Culture.” Which in retrospect is a good movement, but to have charged Vaught this heavily just because she made a simple human error is a bit extreme.
Many people agree that Vaught’s charges were very extreme so people started a petition to reverse the verdict. So far over 102,000 people signed the petition and many more are signing as the days pass.
This blog post is part of the CIMA Law Group Blog. If you are in need of legal help, the CIMA Law Group is a law firm in Phoenix, Arizona which possesses expertise in Immigration Law, Criminal Defense, Personal Injury, and Government Relations.
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