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Homicide Verdict for Nurse in Medical Error Case Stuns Nurses and Advocacy Groups
Former nurse RaDonda Vaught has been found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in a case that has shaken the nursing profession to its core.
If you know any nurses, if you’ve spent even a moment on social media over the past six months, you’ve probably already heard the story of former nurse RaDonda Vaught.
It’s every patient’s worst nightmare; it’s every medical practitioner’s worst nightmare, too: A reasonably healthy person goes into the hospital for a medical procedure, receives the wrong medication by mistake and dies before anyone can save them.
It isn’t an unknown scenario: Medical errors cost thousands of lives every year. Avoiding medical errors are the reason surgeons often use checklists in the operating room. Medical errors are the reason medical malpractice insurance is so expensive and the reason Elizabeth Holmes was able to bilk investors out of a large fortune with the pie-in-the-sky promises of Theranos.
Holmes claimed to have invented a medical device that would allow advanced technology to scan a drop of someone’s blood and diagnose them beyond the shadow of a doubt. This miracle machine would, it was fervently hoped, be less fallible than human beings.