An ex-nurse is on trial for accidentally injecting the wrong medicine and dying as a result.

 An ex-nurse is on trial for accidentally injecting the wrong medicine and dying as a result.

On Dec. 26, 2017, RaDonda Vaught, 37, was charged with reckless homicide after giving Charlene Murphey, 75, the medicine vecuronium instead of the sedative Versed.Murphey had been brought to the hospital two days before for a headache and vision loss in one eye. According to evidence, doctors ordered a PET scan on the 26th to check for malignancy, but Murphey was claustrophobic and requested medication to ease her fear.Because Versed was classified under the generic term midazolam, Vaught was unable to locate it in an automated drug dispensing cabinet. According to court papers, she instead used an override mechanism to put in "VE" and then took vecuromium. After injecting the medication, Vaught departed the imaging area, but minutes later he returned.

In the early hours of December 27, the woman's relatives decided to take her off life support.During opening statements Tuesday, Nashville Assistant District Attorney General Debbie Housel claimed the nurse ignored warning labels on the prescription and didn't recognize the medication she chose was quite different from the one needed.

"RaDonda Vaught willfully disregarded what she learnt in school" when she delivered vecuronium, a medication used in the execution of prisoners, according to the prosecution.Housel explained that vecuronium is only given when someone is intubated since it paralyzes the body. "A person cannot breathe, move, or scream for help."

Vaught also failed to scan the drug against the patient's medical identification bracelet, according to Housel, in addition to the override. She went on to say that instead of a liquid, the medicine she chose was a powder that had to be reconstituted.The hospital, according to defense counsel Peter Strianse, was at least largely to fault for Murphey's death.In 2017, he added, delays in communication between the pharmacy and the hospital's automatic drug dispensing cabinets were caused by complications with a new electronic records system. According to him, this frequently forced nurses to defy the system. In the imaging area of the hospital where the accident occurred, there was also no scanner for the drug.

Vaught acknowledged her mistake as soon as she noticed it, and the state medical board took no action against her at first. According to Strianse, the finger-pointing began only after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services discovered the blunder and conducted a surprise inspection at Vanderbilt."This was a high-stakes musical chairs and blame game," Strianse claimed. "There was no chair for RaDonda Vaught when the music ended."Murphey's daughter-in-law Chandra Murphey testified on Tuesday, crying as she recalled Charlene Murphy's final days.