RaDonda Vaught on Life After Nursing, Shame, and the Mistake Every Nurse Fears

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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. Welcome back to the Club Nurse Podcast. My name is Colton Lord, your host, and today we have a guest on I'm super excited to talk to. Um, I know over the last, you know, few weeks, probably actually a couple months, I've just been doing solo news episodes. So excited to have a guest back here on the podcast. We have Redonda Vought, which I'm sure most of you listening have either heard that name or, you know, know something about what had happened with Redonda. So I'm super excited to have you here today, to have you talk about your story and just to really provide your insights because I think that it is important for us as nurses who are, we're all vulnerable to anything happening to us at any time. So I'm excited to have you here. So welcome to the Club Nurse Podcast.

Thanks. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Yeah, absolutely.

So things that I want to point out. Number one, this is not just my story. And I always try to be really clear about that. I'm the one that narrates it a lot, but it doesn't belong to me. And there were many, this is a story about an event. I just happen to be the one that's telling it. You know, this is Charlene Murphy's story as much as it is anyone else's. Yeah. It's a whole community worth of people. It's, it's all of their story. And we are all vulnerable ourselves, our patients. It's a very vulnerable career field that we work in with a very vulnerable group of people that we're caring for.

Yeah. Yeah, no, totally. Absolutely. Um, I'll give like, I'll just give like a brief kind of overview and then I think it would be best maybe if you give us just kind of the, for anyone who, who maybe doesn't know, just give us kind of the rundown of what happened. Um, and then of course, like I said, I know that you've, that people can find all the, all the information that they want. Um, but obviously it's, I think, best to hear it from the source as well. So, know you worked for Vanderbilt University Medical Center, um, was in Nashville, correct?

Yeah, in Nashville. Uh, I was a neuro ICU nurse there. I started in October of 2015, like a fairly new nurse. I had about 9 months of med surg experience at a smaller hospital. And then this particular event happened about 26 months into my career. So it was December, end of December of, uh, 2017. So I'd been there for about Well, over 2 years.

Okay. Well, yeah, why don't, why don't you just give us kind of the, the brief overview of kind of what happened?

Yeah, sure. Um, so I was working there, it was my dream job. This was day after Christmas. I was working in a help-all role, so not a float role. It was essentially a resource nurse for our critical care unit. I was also, um, orienting, um, someone that was part of our nurse residency program in our unit. So he was a newly licensed nurse and, um, I made a med error. I gave a patient vecuronium, a paralytic agent, instead of the Versed that she had been prescribed for her claustrophobia and anxiety for a PET scan. And she was unmonitored and alone, and she ultimately sustained an anoxic brain injury and passed away as a result of that med error. Full transparency, you know, I, as soon as I was aware of the mistake, I reported it. I told all of the people, did all the things. Ultimately Vanderbilt did decide to terminate me pretty quickly within, within a week. The Board of Nursing investigated, you know, ultimately there were 2 investigations. The first one ended with nothing happening. The second one ended with me losing my license. I was arrested for 2 felony charges in February of 2019 and then convicted in 2022. of criminally negligent homicide and abuse of an impaired adult. Served 3 years of probation, and now I am, I'm here to, I'm here to steer this back in a better direction because it happened and it, nothing about it was pleasant for sure.

Mm-hmm.

But one thing I will say is you have to find a silver lining.

Right.

And the silver lining in this particular event is that Uh, I have no strings attached. I can discuss whatever I want. I don't even have to worry about violating HIPAA because all of these medical records and documents were provided in a court of law, including, you know, my incident reports, just hundreds and thousands of pages of evidence and information that we normally don't ever get a chance to assess and look at and really learn from. And learning from them is the point.

Mm-hmm.

We don't get a chance to do that because we are restricted in so many ways. First and foremost, federal law is going to prevent those conversations from happening. And then you have, you know, your licensure and what it's okay for you to do professionally, what your standards and ethics say that you can and can't engage in conversation and try to talk about things. Your workplace, you have to worry about losing your job, potential retaliation, et cetera. So there's a lot of reasons. And I feel like this case became one more reason for people not to report and not just to not report, you know, events, but also near misses, the really low hanging fruit, the stuff that we could be working on. But there was a lot of fear around that. So the silver lining here is that, you know, I want to be a part of correcting that. I don't wanna be the reason why more people are hurt. And when I say more people, I mean patients and healthcare workers. I don't wanna be the reason why that happens. So yeah, I think it's important that I have this chance to just, just, just talk and share. Nothing else. People are having the conversation, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think it's great first of all, because, you know, you don't have to do this, right? You don't have to, to share your story. You don't have to keep kind of bringing it up. You don't have to keep reliving, um, you know, what happened in, in, uh, that situation. Uh, but that is kind of something like that I wonder is what is, what is your outlook on, on people reporting? Like, do you feel like if you had not, I mean, obviously you would've had to live with that 'cause you knew it had happened, but do you, do you think if you had never said anything, do you think the hospital would've investigated the, you know, the death? Like, do you think that it would've ever ended up where it did? Or, I mean, I know it's kind of maybe hard to say, but like, what do you think?

No, I don't think it's hard to say at all. Um, and listen, I'm not gonna go down the rabbit hole here, but I can tell you that Given the hospital's response in the immediate months after this event happened, um, had I said nothing, had we just, you know, had there been nothing on paper, and the only thing really on paper was my incident reports and then a few notes, there's, it's not even documented by me that I gave her the medication. Again, I don't wanna get into the weeds with all that. Sure.

Sure.

Based on what factually, not throwing Vanderbilt under the bus, it's, I'm, you're never gonna hear me do that. But factually, based on what happened, no, I don't think that we would've heard about this. It would've just gone. It would've been another unheard of event. And what good does that do?

Right. Which is, which, which points to the issue of why, you know, healthcare professionals and specifically nurses feel scared to say anything, even if they did make an That you know didn't didn't fatally harm anybody or even maybe didn't even bring any injury to them. It's just the you know these these hospital systems tell us you know that they they want these reports because they just want to you know improve processes and yada yada yada. But the reality is is when you do report something, we can be criminally charged. We can be lose our license. And you know that's it. I don't know. It's it's hard to know like what is you know in my opinion. I think obviously you did the right thing because you you know. You notice, oh my gosh, I made a mistake. I need to make sure this, everyone's aware. And yeah, I'm sure that, you know, that was years of, you know, so much, so much stress. I mean, just the fact that you had to, you know, go through the whole trial and like that was years of your life of just like not knowing what's gonna happen. Yeah.

That's it. Not knowing what was gonna happen. I lived in limbo just every waking minute of every day. It was rough. It was rough, but it certainly wasn't worse than what that patient went through. It wasn't worse than what her family had to go through and having to watch it unfold on their end, you know, um, and have this very deeply personal situation play out publicly. Um, yeah, it was hard all around. I will say we're having conversations now that we weren't having years ago whenever I was in nursing school. No one was talking about this.

Yeah.

No, no one talked about what's the, what's the expectation? You know, no one talked about the fact that really bad things, not if, but when, real bad things are going to happen in your career.

Yeah.

You're not just gonna make a little mistake and give, you know, ibuprofen instead of aspirin. You're— big things are going to happen. Bad things are going to happen. Because we are human in the line of work that we have, the mistakes that we make are going to have higher consequence. So we're having conversations now, just simply talking about the shame gremlin, as Brené Brown would say, just simply talking about it. I love her. I'm gonna get her. I was listening to her podcast earlier today. Like, amazing. Anytime I need a little pick-me-up.

I'm like, just, she could be talking about anything and I'm like, I feel better.

Like, I feel better. I feel better. She's talking about, she's talking about the World Cup right now. And I'm like, I don't even watch sports. I never watched a single minute of it, but still I feel better.

Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. I, I think, but like, you know, the message that she drives home with shame and vulnerability, it's all, it's amazing. But yeah, listening to her talk about anything, you know, speaking to nurses out there or really anybody, I suppose, in healthcare, like how do you accept a situation like this and move on? Is it something that you've had to just accept, or is it just something that you live with? Like, how, how does one move on from, um, even if it's not something fatal, but if it's just like a big mistake that they made, uh, like how do you deal with that and move on in your opinion?

Do you know what my, the, the dean of my nursing school said to me on the first day? Not to me, to all 125 of us. How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time. I don't know.

One bite at a time. Yeah, that's it. One bite at a time. One bite at a time. There is no magic. There is no magic recipe. There is no, I can give you a pep talk. I can give you words of wisdom. I think the biggest thing that we can do for one another is to connect.

Mm-hmm.

And, and in our own lived experience. Share and bond with other people when they're having that same lived experience. So these shame gremlins of, you know, I would never, I would never do that. Of course you would not intentionally ever, but a mistake is not a choice. It only looks like a choice in hindsight. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

It's not a choice. It's you doing what you feel like is the right thing in the moment. And maybe you miss a few details here and there, but you're certainly not setting out to create this intended negative outcome. Otherwise you would have made different decisions had you not intended that, right? So it's one day at a time and it's recognizing if you see someone else going through something like that, if you have a little bit of experience, be there for that person.

Right.

Right. I remember before I was arrested, before any of this had publicly even came out, I, I had taken about 6 months off of work and then I started working in a CVICU in another hospital in Nashville. And one of our newer nurses who was orienting, I was already off of orientation and I was getting report from her. She was still on orientation and she had, she had mixed up this patient's drip when she originally hung it, um, right after they'd come out of the OR. You know, a fresh heart patient and she'd, she'd mixed it up and she'd, it had been caught very quickly. Nothing, no harm came to the patient. You know, I wanna say the drip was probably up for less than a couple of minutes, right? Very quickly caught, very quickly fixed. But she was emotionally affected, strongly emotionally affected.

Yeah.

She was in tears trying to get through a report. And I sat down with her and I was like, you know what? And I had never said anything about this event outside of the very few people that were very close to me.

This is before it was like a public—

Oh yeah. This was before CMS report had come out. This is before anyone knew about it. Um, I sat down with her and I was like, you know what? This, this feels like a moment where I think I, I can share with you. And I was like, look, we've all made mistakes. And I said, this is a learning opportunity for you. You, you did not intend to make that mistake. It happened. It happened because you're human. And I can tell you that I've, I know how you're feeling right there, right, right now. I know how you're feeling. I know how you're feeling because I've made a really bad mistake. I've made mistakes, but I've also made a really bad one, a mistake that had consequences that we could not return from.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Someone lost their life because of a mistake that I made. And I told her that in that moment. And I think what it— she wrote me a letter after I'd gotten arrested and she said, I will never forget how you treated me in that moment. Right. Your, your kindness and you recognizing that I was going through something and giving me the— just sitting down. Spending 5 minutes of the time we needed to get report on this patient to talk about this and say, I see you where you are. It's, it's okay.

Right.

Right. I'm not saying it's okay for us to be willy-nilly making mistakes.

Right.

I'm not saying it's okay for us to not pay attention. I'm saying making a mistake is part of your human lived experience. And most important thing that you can do is take a few deep breaths and look at this factually and realize, recognize what can I learn from this?

Yeah.

Right? Be grateful for the fact that nothing bad happened to the patient and be grateful for the opportunity that you have to learn because I'm telling you, this is not going to be the last time you're ever going to make a mistake. You won't make this mistake again though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You bet your ass you won't make this mistake again, but you'll make others.

Correct.

And again, you will see other people making mistakes. Our job inherently is to continue to learn and to be advocates for ourselves and for our patients. In order to do that, we need to be continuously learning. We need to be supporting one another.

Correct.

We need to be creating a culture where we are talking about mistakes because Who knows what was really happening in that room, right? Was this a, was this a lookalike soundalike, right? Did someone just hand you a bag of medications and say, hey, go run and hang this? Were you changing out a medication? Was this it? There could have been a number of other things.

Yeah.

So trying to calm that emotional response in the moment while it's still fresh and while you have the opportunity and to go look and say, what can I learn from this? Let me take a step back and look at this from a human factors standpoint. What was going on in my brain that made me make the decision to hang this drug and administer it this way? What was happening? What were the other things that were happening around you? And if we don't take the moment, the moments immediately after that, or in that timeframe to support people, calm them down and allow them sort of shift the direction to say, let's go learn from this now. We're just, we're driving that reporting culture down, right? That's the most important thing you can do.

And well, I think, I mean, you, you really touched on it earlier of like, uh, or hit the nail on the head. It's, it's shame. I think that's, that's like the biggest thing for people and, you know, for nurses is it's the shame of like, oh my God, I made a mistake. I did something. And it's, it is just, unfortunately, it's just, it is the culture in nursing. You know, it's like, there's a lot of, There's a lot of ego in nursing, especially when you get into these critical care, like the ER, the ICU. Um, there's, there's a lot of—

Expectations that you're confident in what you're doing, right?

Confident and competent. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I, I mean, I've, I know as you're talking, I'm even reflecting on times in my career where I've done things where like, I'm like, oh my God, like I, I will ruminate on it for days. Um, and it's like no one, you don't want to say anything to people because you don't want the judgment, right? Or you don't want it to lead to something else. And You know, I, I've talked about this before, but like early in my career, I had a, I was maybe had been a nurse for about 6 months. I had had a patient who took his own life on my, you know, he was one of my patients. It was terrible. It took me so long to like, you know, process that. And, you know, luckily enough, I, at some point it was just like random chance. A family member of that patient had like spoken to a social worker who was also there that day at like a church event or something. And she ended up relaying the information back to me that just like gave me the closure of like, you know, like it wasn't my fault. I carried that. And I think, again, that's what nurses do is just human. We are human and we carry those things and we carry that guilt. And like you said, this is not just your story. This is the patients, the families. And yeah, it's just hard.

I think it's every nurse's story in a way. You could take my name out of it. You can take the context specifically of what this patient was what was going on with this patient. But if you really dumb it down to the lowest level of details, it's every nurse's—

Yeah.

Probably every doctor, every provider, anyone who works in direct patient care. It, it's everyone's worst nightmare. Mm-hmm. And I think every— that, I guess that's part of what really made this take off the way that it did is especially happening, um, right after Going to court right after COVID, the amount of things that we had seen in healthcare throughout that pandemic did enough damage, I think, on its own.

Mm-hmm.

And then to see, oh my God, now we're gonna be criminally prosecuted. Like, do you know what kind of a crap show? Like everyone was, they were literally just barely getting by.

Mm-hmm.

On like the worst possible conditions.

Right.

And now we have this to deal with. You know, I think it was too much and they were like, pump the brakes. This is not okay. Right?

Yeah.

2 wrongs don't make a right.

Right.

Criminally prosecuting someone for something that they did not intend to do and were completely transparent about is not going to make people in hospitals any safer. In fact, it only does the opposite. It drives reporting underground. What we need to do is think about human behavior and what is going to— how are we going to have a better outcome, not a worse outcome? Because I don't know what right looks like, but that ain't it.

Yeah. Right? Yeah.

I had a lot of empathy for the people who were working actively because I was still licensed, but I was never working in a clinical role through COVID.

No. Yeah. But it was a time.

Yeah. I can see, you know, what was my worst day. I can see that in their experience and what we do. Yeah. It is highly emotional. We are highly connected to the work that we do.

Yeah. Right. And that kind of, that's a great kind of segue into like what I wanted to ask you about. How, how have you, and again, I don't know if you have an answer for this. Do any of us have answers for anything? But in your, in your perspective, like how How do you find— how have you been able to, I guess, like separate your— because I think a lot of us, again, identify with being a nurse so much that like, how do you separate yourself from that when, again, all of us are vulnerable to that being taken away from us, whether it's something like your situation or whether that's an injury that you're now not able to carry out the work that you've been doing at the bedside, or again, whatever it may be, like, how have you been able to, yeah, like separate yourself from like, I am You know, I'm a nurse, it's part of who I am versus like, that's, you know, yes, that's what I do. It's how I make my living. It's, I, I enjoy it. Like, how have you been able to separate that?

I don't think you ever do mentally. Right. I, I think it's, I think it's still there. It's, it's like, um, it's like breaking up, you know, with somebody that you really love.

Yeah.

I guess. I mean, I, I don't know. It's a great way to put it. Yeah. You know, Or, or maybe having them break up with you. It'd be like having them break up with you. The option's not there anymore.

Yeah. Like I've given all of this to you and now you're going to leave me here. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, which it's time for us to go our separate ways. There, there is, there, you know, we're never, we're never, ever, ever getting back together. Uh, in the words of Taylor.

Yeah.

That's kind of what it's like. You just have to sort of accept it. The emotional pain is still there. Legally, I have to be very clear. I am not a licensed nurse and I do not hold any sort of professional license. So I'm, every time I speak publicly, I'm, uh, that's in there somewhere because, you know, I have to make that extremely clear. So it's really like in a situation, I have to be clear. I have to just, you know, very black and white. I have to be black and white about it. And I would never wanna go back to working at the bedside. Do I miss it? Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

I, I miss connecting with people. I love connecting with people. I'm an people person.

Yeah.

And, but that never goes away. Yeah. Or I don't, I don't need to be taking care of people at the bedside to connect with people, to be a helpful person. I, I think I can continue to do good things and connect with people. You just have to find a different way to use it. Nursing is an art and a science, right? It's a balance. And so. There's your heart and there's your mind and it doesn't really turn off, but I just have to know like you can shift.

Yeah.

Right. It doesn't have to be one or the other. There's a million things you can do in nursing and—

Correct. Yeah.

And now I'm, no, I'm not a nurse, but no level of charging me criminally is gonna take away the education that I have.

Correct.

Yes. I still put BSN behind my signature cuz I worked hard for that. Still paying the student loans on it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So you better be claiming that, that BSN then for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. So I guess technically, I don't know. I don't know that you ever really turn it off. 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 career. Don't miss out. Visit nurse.org/discounts for the latest discounts made just for you.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I feel like that's, yeah, that's a totally fair answer. I just, I just wonder that because I think. Again, when you get— when you're especially when you're a new grad nurse, it's like you're so proud to be like, I'm a nurse. And even today, I mean, I still feel proud to like be able to, you know, to say that. I just think, you know, when you get to a point in, you know, obviously you didn't have the choice to have to like leave, you know, leave the bedside versus when people get to a point in their career where, you know, and I have these thoughts all the time of just like, what am I doing? Like, do I really want to keep doing this? And, and I, you know, again, I just—

Yeah.

When you've lived this long and doing the same job and it's like, this is what people kind of know me as. I have all the, you know, the social media and the podcast that's nursing. And it's just like, uh, you know, it becomes part of your identity. Yeah.

Nursing will forever be a part of my identity.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, um, it will never not be a part of my identity. And just like we grow, then you don't wanna stay stuck in the same place. Just because nursing is a part of your identity doesn't mean that you have to stay where you are right now.

Yeah.

It's a part of your life. It's a part of the road that you walk down. If you want to make a left and take a different path, you should do that.

Yeah.

If that's okay. Right. Um, we put so much pressure on ourselves and I think a lot of that is, it's on ourselves and then it's also kind of driven in culturally, like the empathy manipulation that, you know, nurses kind of get Yeah.

And forced into. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Again, it's just part of, it's part of healthcare culture. Um, I think taking care of yourself is the most important thing that you can do. And then it doesn't matter what you're doing, because if you're taking care of yourself, your body, your mind, your, like, your spidey senses are going to tell you it's time for me to take a break from this.

And that is listening. It's listening to that. That's the most important, right?

It's listening to that and knowing that you have to step away from the hero syndrome, right? You hook your oxygen mask on before you help others around you.

Because that goes to another, I mean, that goes to another, like another point of like, if you don't, I feel, and I'm sure that there's studies on this, um, but if you, if you're, if you're not listening to that part of you, I feel like you're probably more apt to make an error or things to happen because if you're not, right, if you're not feeling— not saying that's what happened with you.

Your cognitive load needs to be focused 100% on that. You need to be rested. You need to be fed. You need to be taking care of yourself mentally, physically. You need to be healthy. You need to be hydrated. You need to be taking care of yourself in order to be the best version of yourself when you show up for these people who are vulnerable, who don't have a choice. To be there. You owe it to yourself and to the people that you're taking care of and to your coworkers, right? Because you're gonna have to watch their patients when they go take 2 seconds to go to the bathroom, right? You're gonna have to be the one to hand off report to someone else or get report from someone else. You need to show up at your best. Taking care of ourselves, we're not great at it. We're not great at it. I think this younger generation is doing a better job, maybe.

I think so.

Or maybe they're, maybe they're just, Maybe it looks like they're doing a better job.

I think they're more— I think they're more like— I ride the line. I'm like, literally, if you Google it, I'm like, I am like the year of like where Millennial ends, Gen Z starts. So like I have a lot of like the Millennial kind of traits, but like Gen Z, I really— yes, I, I do think that they're less, um—

I'm like Gen X to— technically I'm a Millennial.

Okay.

Yeah. But I still have a lot of like— I'm not that far off From, from the Gen X people.

Yeah.

I mean, raised in the South where everyone's like super close-minded about things and not very progressive, like a lot of, a lot of Gen X type of things, like growing up that way. So it is interesting to watch this new generation of nurses. Yeah. Come in. I can't, you know what I can't wait for? What are these, what are they called? They're honey badgers or what are they?

Is this the new generation?

Yeah, they're like—

No idea.

I don't know. There's this lady on social media and I remember her describing them like, I don't know, they're just, they're whatever it's after. Is it alpha that's next? Yeah.

I don't know. Yeah. I don't, I don't have no idea.

We're aging ourselves.

I'm like, I don't actually know.

Well, there's a little, there's, there's a group of little honey badger piranhas.

Mm-hmm.

In the works. And when those people get into healthcare, they'll be the ones taking care of us when we're in the nursing home. Like, you know, I got Dr. Dre on in the background. Okay. We're all repping our tramp stamps and they're gonna be the ones taking care of us. So it's gonna be great. But I can't wait to see them because it, it's interesting to see people evolve and generationally evolve. And I feel like the generations that are coming in, they're using their voice more. They're more comfortable to say, no, I don't think so. Right? Whether they realize it or not, they're learning from the lessons of people before them because we've put practices into place and we put boundaries into place and they're learning how to create those boundaries for themselves. And that also means creating boundaries for yourself in your workplace.

Mm-hmm.

Part of that is saying, yeah, no, my limit is here. I don't, I'm not, um, I'm not comfortable and it's not safe for me to take any more patients. Um, I will be taking my 30 minutes for lunch. I will not be not clocking out. I will not be clocking out and not taking lunch.

Right.

If I need to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom. Yeah. You're going to need to have someone here to cover that for me. Right? Basic human rights. Basic functions, right? It, and having the courage, um, and just the sense of self to say, yeah, I am going to advocate for me to be the best version of myself today so that I can be the best version of the nurse taking care of these patients is, it's important.

Correct. And it just trickles down the, if like we're talking about, if, if the nurse is taken care of, it just trickles down to better patient care, better outcomes. Just, you know, it has to, it just, it has to, I mean, Talking about all that, I mean, I, I've, I'm, I'm in California now and I, I've, I've been in disbelief at my new job because they working in the ER because they, they send a break nurse to you and you don't have a choice and you go take an hour. I take an hour break and it's like, oh, this is like, I've—

An hour?

One full hour. Like, and it's like, I mean, I've been, so I just go outside, like get some sunshine.

Just like actually go take one of those walks that like all of these healthcare institutions are like, Ways to, yeah, de-stress.

And I do. I walk outside.

Walk outside. What nurse sees the outside for 13 hours a day unless you've had to wheel your patient downstairs and take them out? You know, you're discharging you.

Yep. It's amazing. And it's not like you're feeling any kind of guilt because you're leaving your coworkers with your assignment. It's a break nurse who is going—

That's their job.

Yep. Their job.

That's their job.

Yeah. It's, it's, it's fabulous. What is— I'm curious, what is like, what is your life looking like? You know, how, how, how is your life different? How are your self-care, you know, practices different after, after life at the bedside? How is that looking different for you? Or how does your— I'm just curious for like, like people to like see like, there is life beyond this. If it's, you know, I think some people love the bedside, but if you don't, if someone listening doesn't love the bedside and they're looking for something else, like, what is— is there life after?

There is life after. But look, if anyone, if anyone can say there's life after, you know, I, I think I'm, I'm proof of that. There is life after. Um, it, it took a long time. It took a long time for me to even feel like, you know, taking a shower and brushing your teeth on a regular basis was, you know, that I, that I was worthy of even taking care of myself because again, the shame is really strong.

Yeah.

Uh, but I don't know that most people are leaving in that situation. But maybe you just hold the guilt of leaving. There is absolutely life after. You can do so many things. Look, my husband wanted to be a farmer since he was little. We started this farming thing while I was still working as a nurse and then grew it over the course of all those other things happening. But I can tell you my nursing education and experience absolutely come into handy doing that. There are, there are so many other things you could do in life.

I think that, I think that our, um, not to interrupt you, but I have said this before to people and I, something I always need to remind myself, nursing and the skills that we obtain is so transferable to so many things.

Transferable. Yeah. So transferable.

What I've, what I've taken from this conversation today is really just accountability, having resilience, telling the truth, and just how, you know, cause I, I keep getting stuck on like, maybe, well, you know, what if you hadn't reported it? But I think, you know, in my opinion, I feel like you would probably be in a worse place cause you'd still be carrying that cause you knew, right? You're like, so like just telling the truth and then also on the other side, like, yeah. Yeah. Because you would hold that and it would be in your body and maybe you would have told a therapist or something. I don't know. But like you, you would just, you know, who knows what you would be doing because we wouldn't be able— we can't know that, obviously. But yeah, I think it would be in a worse place. But I, and I, then I also think what I've taken from this is as a nursing community, being, being kind to one another and not being, you know, so ego-driven and so judgy towards other people and understanding that any of us, no matter how much, how competent you are, how many years of experience you have, what you've done, any of us Um, vulnerable to making a mistake and our career completely being changed in, in a second. So, and our lives.

Your life could change in a second, whether it's in it, inside your career or out of it. Um, you, you never know what's about to happen in the next minute. You said one thing, and this is a word that like, it strikes a nerve every time I hear it, and it's accountability. Can I ask you a question?

Sure.

What does accountability mean to you?

What does accountability mean to me? Um, accountability would, to me, just means taking, yeah, taking responsibility for my, what I've done, my actions, my choices.

When you say taking responsibility, say more about that.

Oh gosh. Okay. Well, I guess I'm kind of, I'm kind of stuck on that. So if I'm, if I'm being—

Can I offer you something?

Please teach me.

When we talk about accountability, And there's a lot of discussion around this. We use accountability a lot, and I feel like it's turned into a really dirty word. You know, we say that person needs to be held accountable.

I see. Okay.

And we make accountability a thing that we feel like, and I say we, like the population in general, people feel like we should do. Like, I can make this person, I can hold them accountable. Accountability is an, an act of one person. It's a ca— it's their ability to account for their actions. And an account means a story. Like, this is the account of what happened. It's their ability to tell their own version of what happened, to be able to Account for your actions. You can't make someone do that.

So, so let me, so let me just make sure I understand. So, so like in, so like in your situation, would it, would accountability just be you saying, oh, I, I made this error, I gave this med instead of this med? Is that like what you're saying?

Yeah. Accountability is your willingness to bear all.

Okay.

Your willingness to say, hey, this is what happened. Um, here, you know, here are the details and I'm gonna show up for a conversation about that. Like, I'm willing to come to the table and engage, you know, with, with whatever comes next.

Mm-hmm.

I'm willing to accept the consequences of my actions, but mostly it, it's the initiation has to be the coming, like, I'm going to tell you what happened.

Gotcha.

I'm going to account for my actions.

Okay.

I think that's what accountability looks like. It means I'm going to stick through it when it's uncomfortable. I'm, I'm here for the uncomfortable truth. We're going to talk about it. I'm going to, I'm going to bear it all out here, right? I'm not, I'm not, it doesn't always mean that you're like falling on your sword, but it means that you're willing to have that conversation about the difficult thing, the thing that went wrong, right? I'm willing to take ownership for my role in what that looked like.

So are you saying, so is this because like, were people, um, saying like, oh, like she should be held accountable for what she did? Is that why? And you're like, well, I am. Yeah.

Um, and I, and not just, you know, not just, um, me personally, but it's like when you buy a car. And like it's a certain type of car or a certain color. You never noticed it before, but then you notice it afterwards.

Correct.

So yeah, during court, obviously they were really looking to, the district attorneys were looking to hold me accountable for my actions. Sure. Right. I've already held myself accountable for my actions.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've already done that. Like, hey, hello, that, you're like, that's why we're here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's why we're here. We're, we're here because, you know, had I not been transparent, we wouldn't even have known this happened. Mm-hmm. Let's be clear about that. So there's a 3-page document in which I accounted for my actions.

Amazing.

Right? I took ownership of my role in what happened here. That's what accountability looks like. And I think our culture isn't super, super great about allowing people to be accountable for what's happening. We're really quick to Blame and accountability kind of become synonymous and accountability becomes punishment and it's not. Yeah.

Yeah. I told, I, yeah, I've never, I have never had somebody explain accountability to me. So that makes total sense what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, it's like, it's one of those things that kind of sticks with me a lot. And when I hear it, I'm always, I don't wanna like challenge you, but like, I, I do wanna ch— I wanna challenge you.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

Just, you totally, you've got, you got me. I was like, I don't, I guess I, my, my interpretation was just, yeah, being responsible. But yeah, what you're saying, like you literally just broke the word down and it makes so much sense.

Yeah. So I always like to like open people's mind. Like, yeah, it's just a way to think about something a little bit differently. Yeah. Things like that are what move us forward in our life, in our profession. And I think just as, as people, it makes us a better person to say, um, I'm, I'm gonna hold back my blame, my, my shame, my judgment of you, and I'm gonna allow you to account for your actions. And then we're gonna move forward together. Yeah.

I love that. Yeah, I do. I love— thank you. No, I thank you for kind of, for giving me that. Yeah. Little switch in my brain. That's, again, I've never had anybody kind of explain, or I guess I've never thought much about. Breaking down that word. So, yeah.

Thanks for indulging me.

Oh, of course. Um, before we end, Redonda, do you, do you have any parting words? Do you have any, any words of wisdom, anything that's just on your heart that you would, that you would share with any new nurse, any experienced nurse, any nurse who's going through whatever in their career? Um, any, any parting words?

I would never, I would not be where I am today Right now, if it were not for millions of nurses across this country who in some way, shape, form, or fashion chose to, um, be kind, whether it was donating $5 to a GoFundMe instead of getting Starbucks that night, whether it was writing a letter or a message, whether it was Showing up, you know, to rally at the courthouse whenever I was being convicted. The acts of kindness that I received, man, I'm so grateful for that. And I'm so thankful for that. And so if you were one of those people that I'll never meet and I'll never get to say thank you to, um, like, thank you. It changed my life and it was what I needed when things were not, not good. And so thank you if you were one of those people. And if you weren't, that's okay. Um, kindness goes a long way. You never know what someone else is going through.

So true.

The amount of times I work, I was working for, from June until February So 8, 8 months, you know, and no one knew what was happening. And I would just go into the respiratory closet at 3 o'clock in the morning and cry and go back to work. You don't know what other people are going through. And a little bit of kindness goes so far. It goes so far. So kindness is free.

Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. Be kind.

Well, thanks, Redonda. I appreciate your time today.

Yeah. Thanks for having me on.

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 at Nurse Daddies or Colton Lord 17, 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.