About two weeks ago, on Friday, March 25, a 37-year-old former nurse from Nashville, Tennessee named RoDonda Vaught was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the death of her patient, 75-year-old Charlene Murphey. Vaught gave her patient the wrong medication on December 26, 2017. Vaught freely admitted to making several errors with that medication on the day it happened, but her defense attorney said that the nurse was not acting outside of the norm and that symmetric problems at Vanderbilt University Medical Center were at least partly to blame for the error of what Vaught did on that day. In other words, it was not just her fault.

The jury didn’t find Vaught guilty of the reckless homicide charge, so the charge was less than the one she was going to get for the accident. Vaught waited for the verdict on Friday morning, supported by many local nurses that had come to the courthouse to show their support. After the verdict was read, Vaught was really calm, but as she looked around, she saw that all of the nurses that were surrounding her in the hallway were in tears afterwards. After all of that, Vaught just wanted to say that she is relieved and, after 4 1/2 years, she hopes that Murphy’s family is also relieved. Vaught faces up to three to six years in prison on the gross neglect conviction, and the sentence hearing is on May 13th.

So technically, if any high school student wants to be a nurse in the future, you have to be careful about what you give your patients. Make sure to check out what you get before you actually give it to them, because one slip up in the job could cost you your whole future just like it has cost Vaught hers.  Even though the jury said it was an accident, they still found her guilty, and she has to go to prison for a maximum of three to six years for that one mistake. It could be a scary job to have, but if you do the work right, you won’t have to have to face what this nurse is having to face.