Should Medical Errors Be Criminalized? This Fort Worth Medical School Offers Another Way.

Arlington TX

27 April, 2022

5:32 PM

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By Alexis Allison, Fort Worth Report April 25, 2022 Vanderbilt nurse RaDonda Vaught was chatting with a mentee the day after Christmas in 2017 when she typed the first two letters of her patient's prescription into the drug cabinet monitor: V-E. She wanted Versed, a sedative to help the 75-year-old patient — a woman hospitalized for a brain bleed — relax before her final scan. Instead, she selected vecuronium, a drug that causes paralysis. Vecuronium was Vaught's top search result, and she didn't check the label before administering it. Within the hour, her patient had no pulse. In fewer than 12, she had died. Later, the patient's medical examiner report would identify her cause of death: acute vecuronium intoxication, an error for which Vaught would, just last month, be criminalized. In the decades since patient safety surfaced as a research priority, no official count of accidental patient deaths exists, but some experts estimate the number in the U.S. could be in the hundreds of thousands each year. "The system is not improving," said Lillee Gelinas, a nurse and course director for patient safety at the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine. "And you have to back up and say, 'Why?''" To read the full article, click here. Fort Worth Report is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that produces factual, in-depth journalism about city and county government, schools, healthcare, business, and arts and culture in Tarrant County. Always free to read; subscribe to newsletters, read coverage or support our newsroom at fortworthreport.org.