RaDonda Vaught homicide case information

State of Tennessee v. RaDonda L. Vaught was an American legal trial in which former Vanderbilt University Medical Center nurse RaDonda Vaught was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and impaired adult abuse after she mistakenly administered the wrong medication that killed a patient in 2017.^[1] She was sentenced to three years' probation.

The case has been highly controversial. Vaught's trial, which was held in Nashville, Tennessee, in March 2022, garnered national attention and sparked debate over when it should be appropriate to prosecute health care professionals for medical errors that result in harm to patients.^[2]

Nurses and other medical practitioners closely monitored the trial, and many expressed concern, alarm, and outrage following the verdict.^[2][3][4] Some experts and professional organizations warned that the case was likely to negatively affect the quality of American health care by discouraging health care workers from reporting their mistakes.^[2] Similarly, the case was seen as undermining the practice of just culture, a policy that has been widely adopted by the medical field over the past two decades in order to improve patient safety. Just culture views genuine errors as system failures and doesn't penalize workers who report making them.^[5][6]

Concerns have also been raised that Vaught's prosecution would cause some nurses to leave the field and some prospective nurses not to enter it in the first place at a time when there is already a nursing shortage.^[2][4][7]