For two decades, nurses have been considered the most trustworthy professionals in the country, above physicians. Yet the rigid hierarchy within hospitals and health systems places physicians at the top, creating a fraught power dynamic and a double standard when it comes to discipline.
Case in point: RaDonda Vaught. She’s a former nurse who was criminally prosecuted this spring after accidentally ordering the wrong drug for a patient, who later died. She’ll serve three years of supervised probation, while a former physician named William Husel was acquitted after purposefully ordering deadly doses of fentanyl for 14 patients who then died under his care.