March 28, 2022- The Georgia Nurses Association is saddened and alarmed to learn that a former Vanderbilt University Medical Center Registered Nurse was convicted of reckless homicide and abuse of an impaired adult after mistakenly administering a medication that led to the patient’s death. 

The criminalization of a medication error is a dangerous signal to send to the healthcare industry. Each year in the United States approximately 7,000 to 9,000 people die of a medication error. (Tariq RA, Vashisht R, Sinha A, Scherbak Y. Medication Dispensing Errors And Prevention. 2021 Nov 14. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2022 Jan–. PMID: 30085607.)

Hospital systems encourage a non-punitive approach to errors in order to continuously improve system processes. Root cause analyses are conducted to determine exactly what happened in order to prevent the error from occurring again. The criminalization of this event will create an environment where transparency, communication, self-reporting, and collaboration is not valued, leading to an unsafe health care setting. 

The GNA agrees with the American Nurses Association's statement: “Health care is highly complex and ever-changing, resulting in a high risk and error-prone system.  Organizational processes and structures must support a “just culture”, which recognizes that health care professionals can make mistakes and systems may fail. All nurses and other health care professionals must be treated fairly when errors occur. ANA supports a full and confidential peer review process in which errors can be examined and system improvements and corrective action plans can be established. Swift and appropriate action should and must always be taken as the situation warrants.”