Overwork them, underpay them. Deny them lunch and rest breaks, time off, and family leave.
Stress them out, burn them out, then throw them in prison if they make a mistake.
“Diana Campion, a nurse practitioner who lives in Florida, recently contemplated going back to bedside nursing part-time,” Vox says (here).
“Given the soaring demand for nurses, it initially seemed worthwhile.”
“But after hearing about … RaDonda Vaught, a Nashville nurse whose medication error led to the death of a 75-year-old woman, as well as … other recent criminal cases against nurses who made medical errors, Campion decided against it.”
“It’s not worth it,” she said.
A health law expert quoted by Vox says it’s “unusual” to criminally charge nursing errors, and pointed out that mistakes often involve hospitals’ system failures. That was true in Vaught’s case. He said, “I’m quite concerned that this nurse is getting thrown under the bus.”
He believes jailing her and other nurses who make mistakes under pressure will have a “chilling effect” on reporting errors and lead to “cover-ups.”
Historically, medical errors have been dealt with by licensing boards and civil settlements with injured patients or families of those who died.
The pandemic has caused nursing shortages, and “the last thing the profession needs is another reason for nurses to leave” patient care jobs, but “that’s exactly the effect the Vaught ruling is having,” the Vox article says, quoting a Massachusetts nurse who said, “that could have been me, and I’m not sticking around for it.”
Photo: Angry nurses head for the courtroom where RaDonda Vaught is on trial