re: Thoughts on the RaDonda Vaught (nurse convicted of negligent homicide) trial?

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Some of the worst ER nurses I’ve worked with ended up becoming NPs. Being a good nurse is in no way a prerequisite for becoming a NP, especially when many of those schools have 100% acceptance rates.

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True, although program and specialty differ in quality. I find the Acute Care trained NP is superior to the FNP training. Market is so flooded, it seems graduates from less desirable schools are getting weeded out.

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Some of the worst ER nurses I’ve worked with ended up becoming NPs. Being a good nurse is in no way a prerequisite for becoming a NP, especially when many of those schools have 100% acceptance rates.

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Well, there's always bad performers in any role. There are terrible physicians. Cool.

I'll bet some of the best nurses you worked with were told, "You should go to NP/PA or CRNA school." The ones that don't likely just don't have the ambition to do it. It's not a slight against them. I'm just saying that people recognize talent and intelligence and generally want to see those people apply themselves to reach a higher position.

Basic breakdown of events:

1. The nurse logs into the Pyxis medication system and searches for a proprietary drug named Versed (generic name midazolam) that works as a sedative/anxiolytic. Important: all meds in the Pyxis are listed by generic name to avoid medication errors.
2. The nurse finds no such drug available in the Pyxis, but instead she does find a generic medication named vecuronium (proprietary name Norcuron) that is almost certainly the only medication listed that starts with a “V.”
3. The nurse overrides the Pyxis system THREE times in order to pull the incorrect medication.
4. The nurse opens the Pyxis drawer and takes the incorrect medication. She DOES NOT perform the UNIVERSALLY REQUIRED narcotic medication vial count for that Pyxis drawer. This is a vial count that anyone who regularly retrieves narcotic medications such as Versed, Fentanyl, Dialaudid, ketamine, morphine, Ativan, or oxycodone would absolutely without question know they would perform if they were collecting Versed from the Pyxis.
5. The nurse holds the incorrect medication vial in her hands and draws it into a syringe. The vial she holds in her hand not only is clearly labeled vecuronium and has a large bold red letter message that reads “Warning: paralyzing agent” across the medication label as well as the same “Warning: paralyzing agent” message inscribed around the rubber stopper through which she must pass the needle to draw the med into the syringe.. The metal seal the holds that rubber stopper in place is red, a feature only present on paralyzing agents. Red label coloration on medication vials is universally reserved for paralytics. Lastly, the vecuronium vial is made of clear glass.
The vial that the nurse should have had in her hand would have read midazolam (or Versed) and would be clearly identifiable by its brown UV protective glass and orange label. Orange label coloration on medication vials is universally reserved for sedatives, specifically benzodiazepines.
6. The nurse neglected to perform the standard medication label check before drawing her medication into the syringe.
7. The nurse injected the vecuronium, a rapidly acting paralytic agent, into the patient. Within two to three minutes, the patient lost all diaphragm control while maintaining complete consciousness throughout. In the next 3 to 10 minutes, the patient was asphyxiated leading to anoxic cardiac arrest.
8. The patient died as a direct result of both the nurse’s actions and inactions. The nurse overrode engineered safeguards and universally-accepted standard medication handling protocols directly leading to this patient’s death.

I guarantee you that this is not the first time that this nurse has performed these same overrides and protocol breeches, and it is also very unlikely that it is the first time that she has administered the wrong medication to a patient of hers.

Only she and God know if it this is the first patient she’s killed.

Trust the experts!

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7. The nurse injected the vecuronium, a rapidly acting paralytic agent, into the patient. Within two to three minutes, the patient lost all diaphragm control while maintaining complete consciousness throughout. In the next 3 to 10 minutes, the patient was asphyxiated leading to anoxic cardiac arrest.

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Are you saying that once it was administered, there was really no chance for the patient?

What is Vecuronium used correctly for?

Wiki says it is used as part of intubation of a patient amongst other things.

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The driver texting or applying make up while driving knows their actions are increasing the risk of having a accident.

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And not checking the label of a drug increases your risk of using the wrong drug. What's so complicated about that that you don't get it?

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Vecuronium, is routinely used as part of surgery to relax the patient. The airway is maintained with a breathing tube and the patient is monitored and supported the entire time.

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So maybe she was given a bigger dose then normal due to assuming it was Versed? But Versed was powder right? SOOOO how the frick did she frick up the dosage?

ETA: I mean if it was a powder would that not have been in the directions given to her? As it was clearly her first time using Versed right? Would most people not have fricking asked that question?

So really, her not monitoring the situation closer was really what killed the patient? Seems like another reasonably competent Nurse in that situation may have been able to save the patients life?

She walks vandy is a dirty whore when the onion is pealed back