Nurse News: Remembering Dolly, Blocked NCLEX Grads, A Deadlocked Jury, and a Paralyzing Med Error

Nurse.org and major league sports teams are honoring nurses with discounted game tickets and once-in-a-lifetime experiences. From throwing the first pitch to riding the Zamboni to on-court recognition, join the fun. Visit nurse.org/nursenight to find a nurse appreciation event near you and grab your discounted tickets today.

Welcome to Club Nurse. I'm Colton Lord, your host. By you being here today, it shows me that you are someone who wants to learn, Grow, laugh, connect, and just let your emotions flow. We are here to share real stories and hear real-life experiences from real people. You are not alone in this, and Club Nurse is here to show you that. Don't forget to follow the show and share today's episode with someone you love. Now let's dive into today's conversation.

Hello everybody, welcome back to the Club Nurse Podcast. My name is Colton Lord, your host. And today we are going to dive into some nurse news, some things happening in healthcare. If you're new to the Club Nurse Podcast, we really cover a lot of news and current events that are happening in healthcare, mostly centered around nursing because this is on the nurse.org platform. You can find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. You can find it at nurse.org embedded in any of the news articles. And yeah, we try to keep you up to date with the most breaking news and things that hopefully will be beneficial to you as the nurse or just person who is listening to this. So the first thing I wanted to just chat about, kind of give a little, just a brief update on. I know, I'm sure anybody listening to this has been maybe not even necessarily following the Lindsay Clancy trial, but has been, you know, paying attention. You know what's happening. If you don't know what's happening, Just give you a very brief overview. I'm not going to go too deep into this, but Lindsay Clancy, a I believe labor and delivery nurse in Massachusetts, is currently on trial for allegedly and trigger warning here. I'm sorry, kind of does get a little bit graphic. It's very sad. She is on trial for the murder of her children. She was basically was a was suffering from postpartum depression psychosis. She was having a lot of mental health crises during this time, had seeked help for these things, had made it very well known that she was having these dark thoughts and she was really struggling. And the tragedy did happen where she did murder her children and subsequently did try to take her own life, which she was not successful at. She ended up going to the ICU at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and now is currently on trial. This— they have still not come to a verdict. They are still deliberating as of September 1st. When I am recording this, they are still waiting for a verdict on this trial. It's very sad regardless of your, you know, your opinions on this or what you really think happened. I think it's just— it's safe to say that we can all agree that it's so tragic and that there needs to be more awareness and more— a better plan for women who are seeking help, who are struggling with postpartum depression or having these thoughts or are having any kind of psychosis postpartum. It's impossible to even put into words. I can't imagine the agony that she was in, the things that she was experiencing in her own mind. It must have felt like worse than even a prison. But in the most up-to-date and most recent article on nurse.org, which you can find at nurse.org/news, the title of it is Nurses and Other Health Experts Say Some Facts in Lindsay Clancy's Case Don't Make Sense. So there's a lot of speculation. You can go on social media, as with anything, There's always so much speculation. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone, you know, will take information and do what they think is most appropriate with that information and formulate their own opinion. Some of them, I think, have some validity to them. Some of them, I think, are very out there. But again, that's not really for me to decide. There is a jury. There's a judge. There's— that is why this is on trial right now. You— I'm not— again, I'm not going to go into the details of everything. 'Cause there's a lot and I don't want to give any false information or lead anybody astray. Uh, I think that you can, you can go online again. Nurse.org has been covering this as well with all of the updates. So it's a great place to get your information. All the information that I provide to you is directly from nurse.org and the news that we are reporting there. But yeah, there are definitely some discrepancies in the case and sometimes, and you know, and some may say that it's just like the public's attempts, uh, to just kind of make make sense of what happened, and that at the end of the day it's just a tragedy. And, uh, yeah, but you know, she's, she's got the right to a fair trial. Um, that is her right as a citizen of this country. And again, it's just, it is so sad. And I think what makes it even harder for our community and, and the nursing community is that she's also a labor and delivery nurse. Like, she's one of us, you know what I mean? And she tried to get help And unfortunately, it ended in in the worst possible way. So everybody stand by for the verdict. Hopefully, we will have some answers soon, just for everybody's sake, for the families, for her sake, so everybody can accept the the jury's verdict and move on from this case. All right, the next thing we're going to talk about this is also not some great news, but nurses sound the alarm after pharmacy error paralyzes patient in a Nashville hospital. So this is actually coming fresh off. I just had a conversation with Redonda Voss. A few weeks ago, if you want to catch that episode, everybody remembers Redonda. If you don't, she was a nurse at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville who had mistakenly gave Vecuronium instead of—I believe she was meaning to give Versed—to a patient going to MRI. That ultimately led to the death of a patient. Redonda is very outspoken about what happened. She's very honest about it. She is now using her voice, her platform, and this tragedy to really help people, to educate nurses, to I think. To make facilities and organizations really reflect on themselves as well and their processes to ensure that these things don't happen. But this case is also coming out of Nashville. Again, these patients had received a medication that they were not supposed to. So these patients were actually supposed to— actually, let's go here. So 4 patients at Ascension St. Thomas Hospital Midtown in Nashville were given potassium phosphate instead of the spinal anesthetic Mepivacaine during routine joint replacement surgeries on August 14th, 2026, and at least two have been left paralyzed. And you may be wondering how because of how the medication was given. The hospital has confirmed the mix-up began as a pharmacy error. A reminder that high alert medication safeguards protect every clinician in the chain, including the nurse or anesthesia provider who administers the dose. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has opened a case after a referral from state regulators. No charges have been filed and no allegations have been proven, but the criminal referral is on. Already drawing comparisons to the Redonda Vought prosecution in the same city, as I was just speaking about. So what happened was all four of these patients experienced adverse health reactions and received immediate medical care. That's a quote from the hospital, adding that a comprehensive review found no other patients were affected. So this is what went wrong: All four surgeries were scheduled as routine joint replacements. One of the patients was a 72-year-old Glenda Dorton of Centerville, Tennessee, who came in for a knee replacement. Her attorney, Mark Walwyn. Said she remains hospitalized and is facing a long and uncertain recovery. Dr. Matthew Burns, a surgeon at Catalina Island Health in California with no connection to the case, told WSMV that infusing it straight into the spine, you can imagine it destroying the spinal cord. He also named the problem every nurse recognizes from the med rooms: if you don't have it labeled, you wouldn't know the difference between 95% of the medications. So from me reading this, it sounds like maybe pharmacy had pulled up the medication and handed it to the provider. And, you know, if they're just handing you a syringe or whatever, however they're administering it, it's just gonna look, you know, the same unless it's something like propofol or something that's very obviously not the medication that you're looking for. Uh, so yes, very tragic. Sounds like this is not going to go well for these patients, and I hope that they can regain some kind of Uh, movement back from this. But again, just another reminder, um, that, uh, medication errors are real, to always double-check things. Uh, as the nurse, this is why, uh, we are so hounded to scan things. I know it is very annoying at times, especially in emergencies, but there's a reason for it. And I think at the end of the day, it really is, uh, just a safeguard for everybody involved.

Hey nurses, looking for exclusive discounts? Nurse.org has you covered with deals on everything. Save big on the essentials you need to excel in your Don't miss out. Visit nurse.org/discounts for the latest discounts made just for you.

Okay, so this next story says nursing graduates blocked from NCLEX as Nightingale College sues California board. So this sounds like a nightmare. I was reading through this and I was like, oh my God, this is a nursing student's nightmare. I remember being in nursing school and they— we had like the— I don't know what you would call them. I went to nursing school in Arizona, but it was like the, the people came who were like the accreditors for the nursing program. Like they come And they basically investigate everything and make sure that your school is like in compliance and gives them the accreditation to, uh, 'cause you can go to nursing school and get a degree. And if like that school doesn't have the appropriate accreditation, then you can't take the NCLEX. So you have a degree, but you're not technically, you're not qualified to take the NCLEX and become a nurse. And I mean, there's not much, I mean, you know, there, I guess there's something you could do with a bachelor's or whatever, some kind of degree in nursing, but if you don't have the license, you can't. Be really, you know, you can't work as a nurse. So Nightingale College has sued the California Board of Nursing on August 24th, challenging a 500-hour direct patient care threshold and an undefined concurrency standard. It says were never lawfully adopted for out-of-state graduates. 873 graduates have California licensure applications on hold per the board. The complaint says about 536 of the college's 561 spring graduates Have been unable to test and about 70 have lost job offers, which is a big bummer because from— I know as a new grad in California, not that I was a new grad here, but I know this now for being here, that new grads have a really hard time finding jobs. It's like a super competitive and saturated market. So it's a big bummer if you're having to get your, you know, your job offers being rescinded. So California treats nursing programs differently depending on where they are based. Schools located in California are approved by the Board of Nursing and must meet state curriculum rules, including minimum direct patient care hours. Graduates of out-of-state schools apply individually, and the board decides whether their education is equivalent to what California requires of its own programs. Nightingale is not to be confused with Florence Nightingale. This is just what the college is called. Nightingale is on the second track. It is headquartered in Utah. Its BSN program is accredited by the Commission of Collegiate Nursing Education, and many of its students live in California and study remotely. The fight is over which rules the board can use when judging their education. So it sounds like this has to do with the hour of direct patient care requirement that they must not have met based on California requirements, but the college is based in Utah. So I don't know, sounds very complicated. If you are a graduate that is being affected right now, what you can do is just to continue to monitor your Breeze account, just watch for application changes, continue your NCLEX preparation, which nurse.org has resources. There's a link in the article Cool. Um, you can also just search NCLEX resources on the nurse.org page. Um, and then rely on verified communications from Nightingale and the Board of Nursing rather than rumors in the student groups. Uh, Nightingale posts case updates on its California update page. And just keep documentation and paper trail because when you apply for jobs, they're gonna ask for why were there gaps in your work history, or why did it take you so long to get a job after you graduated? They wanna know all those things. So make sure you just keep paper trail. Always good to document things. You should you should know this now that your nurse says documentation is huge. So yeah, and I guess there's you know there's there's a nice little debate. Good question on if clinical simulation hours should count towards direct patient care requirements for licensure. I don't know what your thoughts are. I think that's a very interesting question. I'm not sure what my opinion is on that. I think that. It maybe depends because I think some simulations are a little bit better than others. And I think some— I don't think that you should be— I think, I think maybe simulation hours should count up to a certain amount. Like, I don't think that you can get through your whole school with just simulation and call it a day. But I do think that there are some benefits. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I do believe that there are some benefits. I think there are also a lot of cons to simulation, but I do see that there are some benefits to certain simulation centers and how they're ran. And I could see how maybe clinical simulation could give you maybe some hours up to a certain amount. That would be my personal opinion, but who am I to say? All right, moving on. I hope that these graduates from this college, Nightingale College, eventually can just get their license and get to work. Girl, we need you. And I think, I think that we, I think we can just move on from this. Let's just give them, let them go take their test. I mean, the State Board of Nursing for California did say like The public and the patients, or the public safety is priority, and I do understand that. Okay, let's move on. Oh my gosh, we had a tragedy this last week, girl. Dolly Parton has died. Ugh. Nurses say goodbye to Dolly Parton, whose giving reached all the way to the bedside. She is amazing. I'm sorry, if you are a rich human being, you are a celebrity, and you have just made a fortune, let Dolly Parton be. Let her be the blueprint on how on how this should work, how money should be shared once you've got enough. Amazing! I couldn't believe like I mean of course everyone knows Dolly Parton, but as she's died and I've kind of like you know read things about her, watched some documentaries on her, I can't believe how much she gives. She just gives and gives and how much she worked and just she just continued to just give back. She never had kids, but she impacted and affected so many people. But she did die on August 25th at Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center. After a short, brief battle with cancer, she did give a million dollars to Vanderbilt in April of 2020, which helped fund early research connected to the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Of course she did. So her name lives on where nurses work from the Dolly Parton Birthing Unit at La Conte Medical Center in her hometown to the newly renamed Dolly Parton Children's Hospital in Knoxville. Amazing! Her legacy is going to live on forever, and so many nurses went to social media to talk about it. I think someone who put a great video up. Was hospice nurse Julie, my girl. Go watch her TikTok or her Instagram about Dolly Parton. Just what it what a person. I mean, there's nobody who will ever be like Dolly Parton. I just I just can't. I was watching something that was like who an interview with like some country music people. Who do you think is the the modern day Dolly Parton? Like girl, nobody. Like you can't compare. Absolutely nobody. I can't even begin to try to compare her to anybody else because she was literally one of one. So RIP Dolly Parton. All right, to round this week's news out, I know we don't have very much good news this week and I'm very sorry, but this is an article. New grad nurse pleads guilty in nursing home hypothermia death, avoids prison. So this actually, this seems like this has been kind of ongoing. This is an update from March of 2025, but this new grad nurse pleaded guilty on August 25th, the same day Dolly died, to 2 misdemeanors, negligent homicide and patient neglect, and was sentenced to 2 years of community control. Now the story basically Was— this was at a nursing home. It was a new grad nurse. A patient was found dead. Sounds like they had somehow gotten locked outside on the patio to a door that was unlocked from the inside but locked on the outside, I believe. Um, got locked outside. It was December and died. Very, very sad. Uh, but it sounds like the, the nurse had falsely documented some things. They're supposed to document every 2 hours on the patient and that they had falsified documentation showing that there were completed tasks Even though they had not actually seen the patient. The timeline went 8:40 PM, the staff last observed this patient in her room during routine medications. At 9:30, the nurse who was assigned noticed the patient was missing but assumed she was with her brother. No immediate report was made. And at 6:30 the next morning, that's when they had called Code Purple alerting that the patient was missing, was found unresponsive on an outdoor patio, and attempts to revive her unsuccessful. Successful. Super sad. Also just points to nursing homes and the staffing issues that they have. I am not here to judge because I can't even imagine. I've worked in a nursing home before as a CNA, and the amount of patients that each person is responsible for is— should be absolutely illegal. But what can you do? We don't have enough nurses, and especially not enough who want to work in nursing homes. I give so much credit to those nurses and those CNAs and those LPNs and anybody Anybody there who is caring for these patients. It is hard work. It's very sad, but that nurse is not going to have to face prison time. All right, everybody, so that's the end of our nurse news segment for this week. Happy September! Fall is on the way, girl. Cooler temperatures are on the horizon. I hope everybody has a beautiful week, and thank you so much for listening to the Club Nurse Podcast, where we keep you up to date on all of the nursing news and breaking healthcare news. We'll see you guys next time. Bye.

From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to thank you for being here at Club Nurse. I hope you gained something valuable from today's episode. And if you did, remember to share this episode with someone that you love. Follow me on socials @NurseDaddies or @ColtonLord17, and be sure to follow nurse.org to stay informed with all of the hottest healthcare topics. Until next time, take care of yourself the way you take care of everyone else. Love ya. Bye.