Not a day passes that RaDonda Vaught does not think about a mistake that cost Vaught her career and a person’s life.
The former ICU nurse at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, shared her emotional story to Tomah Health staff during a Nurse’s Day event sponsored by Coverys Community Healthcare Foundation and hosted by Tomah Health, May 7.
“We felt that during Nurse’s Week it was extremely important for us to bring RaDonda’s story to our staff, not just nurses, but our whole staff to really talk about how it’s not always black and white when systems breakdown,” Tomah Health Chief Clinical Officer Tracy Myhre said of the presentation attended in person by 65 hospital staff and online by nearly 300 people across the country. “There are lots of craters and holes and things just don’t go correctly and at the end of that there is a patient. We really wanted our staff to be able to think about that process and to learn from what she learned,” added Myhre.
Vaught was fired from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and stripped of her nursing licenses following an incident in Dec. 2017 when she gave 75-year-old patient Charlene Murphey a fatal dose of the wrong medication. The case drew national attention when a jury later found Vaught guilty of negligent homicide and gross neglect of an impaired adult and sentenced her to three years of probation which will end later this year.
“It’s cathartic to be able to share what was largely a negative experience with the worst possible outcome at every single turn,” Vaught said of her presentation which she has shared more than 50 times to audiences across the country. “I don’t put this behind me. This is present always and based on every person that comes and shares their experience with me, it could be yesterday or 30 years ago. It’s never in the past. It’s always in the present.”
During the hour-and-a-half presentation, Vaught relived her past with tears and some laughter. “I don’t need people to feel sorry for me or to empathize with me. The takeaway here isn’t me or my emotions, the takeaway here is that we are all part of a bigger system and we have to take our individual accountability to be better at it. I’m just the voice of one incident.”
Despite the challenges she has faced over the years, Vaught stressed that healthcare staff need to take care of themselves as well as their patients. “I think the message for healthcare staff is that it is in our hands to be kind to ourselves and be kind to our patients and in order to do that we have to acknowledge all aspects, the good and the bad and figure out how to move forward when there is bad. It’s a difficult job, but we’ve all signed up to do it.”
Even though the presentation spotlighted nurses, Vaught believes her story applies to everyone who works in healthcare. “We are all operating together, it doesn’t matter what it is, what you’re doing is playing a role in the ultimate goal, which is to take care of people when they’re at their worst. You never know what someone is going through. We don’t operate alone. We need each other.”
While Vaught loved being a nurse, she will never be a nurse again. “I could never walk into a room and try to provide nursing care to someone; people don’t deserve that. So no, you know, I will never do that again and I’m OK with that.”
Vaught said she will continue to tell her story as long as there are others who want to hear it. “People’s lives are going to be saved because I have been given this opportunity to share what happened with myself,” said Vaught. “I just kept telling myself I don’t know what it is, but something positive has to come out of this. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but there has to be a light at the end of this tunnel, and this is it; sharing this experience with other people so they can learn from it and take away what they need to take away to be better and safer at their jobs for themselves and for people. That’s what I get out of it.”