Nurse charged in fatal drug-swap error pleads not guilty

[left-of-center2012]

A Tennessee nurse charged with reckless homicide after a medication error killed a patient pleaded not guilty on Wednesday in a Nashville courtroom packed with other nurses who came in scrubs to show their support.

The error happened at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in December 2017 when RaDonda Vaught injected 75-year-old Charlene Murphey with the paralytic vecuronium instead of the sedative Versed.

The 35-year-old Vaught could not find Versed in an automatic dispensing cabinet, so she used an override mechanism to type in "VE" then picked the first drug that came up, according to court documents and a report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Charlene Murphey's husband, Sam Murphey, reached by phone said he is too upset to talk about his wife. Her son, Gary Murphey, told The Tennessean newspaper earlier this month that his mother would have forgiven Vaught and felt sorrow for her. "I know my mom well, and she would be very upset knowing that this lady may spend some of her life in prison," Gary Murphey told The Tennessean. "She probably has a family, and it's destroyed their life too."

He also said the family has no plans to sue the hospital.

https://www.kob.com/us-news/nurse-charged-in-fatal-drug-swap-error-pleads-not-guilty/5252722/

[Dennis Donovan]

1. A terrible tragedy.

Something similar happened to our neighbor, who was an RN. She made a mistake like this. It destroyed her life.

[Docreed2003]

2. This case has truly rocked the TN medical community

There are so many steps and safeguards that we're ignored and overstepped in this case which should have prevented vecuronium from ever being administered to this patient. The scary part is this wasn't some newbie nurse...this was a very well regarded, experienced nurse. There's speculation that she was mentally preoccupied with personal issues, I've heard that her husband had recently deployed but I've not seen verification of that.

Regardless, the nurse made a terrible mistake that cost this patient their life. A bigger issue in my mind is that Vanderbilt tried to cover this disaster up and not disclose what had happened.