Nurses have traveled from around the country to protest Friday outside the Nashville courtroom where a former Tennessee nurse will be sentenced for causing the death of a patient.
RaDonda Vaught was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in March after she accidentally administered the wrong medication. She faces up to eight years in prison at Friday's sentencing. Her conviction is a rallying point for nurses frustrated by poor working conditions made worse by the pandemic.
Some have left bedside nursing and others have left the profession altogether, saying the risk of going to prison for a mistake has made nursing intolerable.
The sentencing comes a day after International Nurses Day, and some nurses drove to Nashville from a march for better working conditions in Washington D.C. on Thursday.
Janie Harvey Garner, a nurse who founded the advocacy group Show Me Your Stethoscope and helped raise money for Vaught’s defense, said it was “terrifying” to think she could be prosecuted for a mistake. She predicted that nurses will start trying to cover up their errors rather than report them, as Vaught did..
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