[1]https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/03/24/1088397...
And of course, a lot of nurses are in the job for the human connection, and will consequently be burned out at an increasing rate.
To some degree this might actually be good long term, because it will be that much harder for hospitals to manipulate nurses into working around the limitations of the system to provide real care, which allows the administration to turn a blind eye to their own flaws. There's going to be a surge of malicious compliance that ends up shining a bright spotlight on just how abusive and dysfunctional hospital systems really are.
And patients will ultimately be the ones who suffer.
The nurse in that case was prosecuted for criminal reckless homicide (not malpractice, which is civil negligence.) The characterization of the hospitals direct responsibility is negligence not arising to criminal (gross) negligence (as the principal of respondeat superior doesn't apply in criminal law, the employees recklessness would not be imputed to the employer the way it would in a civil case.)
As for civil liability if the hospital, that was settled out of court with the victims family, the hospital did not get off scot free.
This... isn't a new thing that deserves the “now” label like it is a change. Criminal wrongdoing by employees (including in healthcare) very often does not rise to a level of criminality for the employer, and that's been true for a long time.
>This... isn't a new thing that deserves the “now” label like it is a change. Criminal wrongdoing by employees (including in healthcare) very often does not rise to a level of criminality for the employer, and that's been true for a long time.
Of course criminal charges for a patient death cannot be administered on an entity like an entire hospital, I didn't mean to insinuate that. But those who share responsibility for her actions: the administrators, doctors, morticians, everyone involved in designing the processes which led to this disaster and being involved in covering it up (i.e. the "hospital"), all seem at least partially liable if we are looking at this mistake through a criminal lens. Would you agree?
Some studies say that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US [1] - yet how often do we see "criminal reckless homicide" brought against nurses? There was an incredibly disingenuous serious of mistakes that had to happen for this nurse to mess up so badly, don't get me wrong. But when nurses are working 50-70 hours a week doing 14 hour shifts under extremely high pressure from management, these insane strings of mistakes are simply going to be an occurrence, and we shouldn't be using our tax dollars to pay for shitty lawyers to go after them for these mistakes. It's a waste of everybody's time, energy, and money, is detrimental to patients, and is a contributor to the fact that 90% of nurses are considering leaving the profession.
[1]https://news.yale.edu/2020/01/28/estimates-preventable-hospi...
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/03/25/1088902...
Strange to see that HN, which is generally suspicious of copaganda, falls for very transparent nursepaganda.
Absolutely. To each according to their authority.
RaDonda Vaught made a mistake, and admitted it, repeatedly, in multiple interviews.
But that mistake was only partly because of her free will. Vanderbilt University Medical Center incentivized her to make that choice, for their own profit, and with control over her employment.
RaDonda Vaught goes to prison.
VUMC pays a fine and nobody goes to prison.
I think HN takes a dim view of a company holding someone's contract in their hands, saying "Do something illegal or I tear this up," and then blaming the employee when everything explodes.
They're playing chicken with patients' lives, and passing off the charges to their employees when they lose.
From the article:
> Janie Harvey Garner, the founder of Show Me Your Stethoscope, a nursing group on Facebook with more than 600,000 members, worries the conviction will have a chilling effect on nurses disclosing their own errors or near errors, which could have a detrimental effect on the quality of patient care.
> "Health care just changed forever," she said after the verdict. "You can no longer trust people to tell the truth because they will be incriminating themselves."
That's the exact opposite of how the NTSB operates. It satisfies the infantile urge to blame and shame a supposed evildoer, to the great detriment of everybody in the long run.
This was driven purely by the state prosecutor.
If you are responsible for the death of another person due to your own negligence then you should be prosecuted for a crime and be removed from any scenario where you are able to repeat that mistake.
