Without evidence of benefit, an intervention should not be presumed to be beneficial or safe.

- Rogue Medic

Management Killed the Patient, But the Nurse is Prosecuted as a Criminal

I wrote about this in 2019 and the only thing that has changed is that the prosecution continues. Is the title misleading? No.

The management of Vanderbilt University Medical Center created the system that killed the patient and the Nashville District Attorney’s Office is an accomplice after the fact.

Yes, the nurse, RaDonda Vaught, is was dangerous as a nurse, but that was fixed by taking away the license to work as a nurse. That doesn’t come close to bringing back the patient killed, but the patient was killed by a system that teaches incompetence. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which should have prevented this death, rather than causing this death.

This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect being promoted by the hospital management. The management put a nurse, who does not know enough to safely administer sedation, in the position of teaching new nurses to sedate patients without monitoring the patients and to leave the patients in the care of people possibly even less qualified to monitor sedated patients.

How can anyone be less qualified than a nurse who killed a patient?

It may not be part of the training of the radiology technician to recognize and address (by calling for help, at a minimum) excessive sedation, so less qualified. On the other hand, the technician is working for the same hospital that put the dangerous nurse in the position of training other nurses to be dangerous.

The hospital management is telling patients that they have hired competent people, that the management values the lives of patients, and that the management is taking reasonable steps to provide the best care to patients, but the management is lying.

Accidents do happen, which is why there are rules for the administration of sedatives to protect patients.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has repeatedly declined to comment on Vaught’s trial or its procedures.

Just as the nurse administered the wrong drug, and did not monitor the patient appropriately even for the drug that was supposed to be given, the Nashville District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting the wrong killer. If anyone should be prosecuted, it should be the people responsible – the management of Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

However, prosecuting doctors, PAs, NPs, nurses, paramedics, technicians, … for medical errors is the kind of abuse of power that harms patients. When medical professionals cannot report medical errors, without fear of being charged with crimes, more patients will die, because the errors will be covered up.

The Nashville District Attorney’s Office is telling medical professionals to cover up errors. If medical professionals do not report errors, we do not learn to avoid errors. We learn to hide errors.

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