"Nurse's Criminal Conviction Could Chill Safety Investigations," Healthcare Risk Management

Posted On May 26, 2022

In an article published in the June issue of Healthcare Risk Management, Shareholder Kelli Sullivan discusses the recent case involving a former nurse, RaDonda Vaught, who was found guilty of negligent homicide related to a medication error.

Sullivan mentions that the worst outcome from the Vaught case could be a chilling effect on patient safety investigations. The article mentions that Vaught was remarkably open and honest about her actions when testifying to the nursing board and cooperating with the CMS investigation, but that information was used against her in the criminal prosecution.

“She did the right thing and fell on her sword, told the truth. The problem is those statements were admissible later in her trial,” said Sullivan. “Now, we have to worry about these statements in investigations and licensure hearings being used against them. The whole purpose of these investigations is to make sure the truth comes out, but when someone risks jail time by telling the truth, a lot of lawyers would counsel their clients to take the Fifth.”

Sullivan worries that such concerns by nurses and other clinicians could hamper a hospital’s internal investigations of adverse events, with employees worried whatever they say could be used against them if criminal charges result. Whether such information could be used by prosecutors is subject to many factors, but just the fear of that outcome could make people hesitant to speak freely.

“That’s going to hamper your investigation and the ability to fix systemic problems,” Sullivan says. “There was evidence in this case that the hospital had been having problems with the dispensing cabinet and nurses were routinely overriding it to get the medications they needed. But if people are hesitant to talk about things like that for fear of criminal prosecution, the risk manager will never know what’s really going on, and you can’t fix a problem you don’t know you have.”

To read the full article, click here.