A Path Forward After the RaDonda Vaught Verdict

Reflections on Patient Safety, Trust, Culture, and the Nursing Profession

Webinar Description

The conviction of nurse RaDonda Vaught marked a watershed moment for healthcare—raising urgent questions about patient safety, accountability, trust, and the future of nursing.

In this on-demand KaiNexus panel discussion, healthcare leaders and clinicians come together to examine what this case reveals about system failures, Just Culture, and the conditions that make medical errors more likely. Rather than focusing on blame, the conversation looks forward—toward learning, prevention, and meaningful improvement.

Using the RaDonda Vaught case as a starting point, the panel explores how fear, criminalization, and punitive responses undermine transparency and learning, and why sustainable patient safety depends on better systems, stronger cultures, and respectful leadership.

This session goes beyond headlines to address the deeper structural, cultural, and operational challenges facing healthcare today—and what leaders and organizations can do to move forward.

View all previous KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Webinars

What You’ll Learn

• Why criminalizing human error threatens patient safety and error reporting

• How system design, workload, and culture contribute to preventable harm

• The role of Just Culture in balancing accountability with learning

• How fear and mistrust accelerate burnout and workforce attrition

• Why nursing retention and patient safety are inseparable

• How Lean thinking and continuous improvement reduce risk at the source

• Practical steps leaders can take to create safer, more transparent environments

Who This Webinar Is For

This webinar is especially valuable for:

• Healthcare executives and senior leaders

• Nursing leaders and frontline clinicians

• Patient safety and quality professionals

• Risk management and compliance leaders

• Continuous improvement and operational excellence teams

• Organizations seeking to strengthen trust, learning, and psychological safety

Key Insight: Patient Safety Requires Systems, Not Scapegoats

Preventable harm is rarely the result of a single individual’s actions.

As this discussion makes clear, sustainable patient safety depends on:

• Designing systems that make errors harder to commit

• Creating cultures where people can speak up without fear

• Learning from near misses before patients are harmed

• Supporting clinicians instead of isolating them after mistakes

When organizations shift from blame to improvement, trust grows—and safer care becomes possible.

About the Panelists:

Greg Jacobson, MD

Greg graduated from Washington University in St Louis in 1997 with a BS in Biology. He attended Baylor College of Medicine from 1997 to 2001. From 2001 to 2004, he completed a residency in Emergency Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center where he then stayed on as faculty. Greg is the Chief Executive Officer and a co-founder of KaiNexus. He is an ER doctor that is fanatical about the single biggest barrier holding companies back from greatness - their lack of continuous improvement work. It has taken him down the path of developing KaiNexus.

Rebecca Love, RN, BS, MSN, FIEL

Rebecca is an experienced nurse executive and the first nurse featured on Ted.com. Rebecca, was the first Director of Nurse Innovation & Entrepreneurship in the United States at Northeastern School of Nursing – the founding initiative in the country designed to empower nurses as innovators and entrepreneurs, where she founded the Nurse Hackathon, the movement has led to transformational change in the Nursing Profession. In early 2019, Rebecca, Co-founded and is President of SONSIEL: The Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs & Leaders. Rebecca is an experienced Nurse Entrepreneur, founding HireNurses.com in 2013 which was acquired in 2018 by Ryalto, LTD UK, where she served as the Managing Director of US Markets until its acquisition in 2019. Currently, Rebecca serves as the Chief Clinical Officer of IntelyCare, Inc. Rebecca is passionate about empowering nurses and creating communities to help nurses innovate, create and collaborate to start businesses and inventions to transform healthcare.

Kelley Reep

Kelly is a Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) in critical care. Kelley came to nursing as a second career after corporate training, freelance writing, and motherhood. She works at a Level 1 Trauma Center in the Southeast. Kelley is a passionate advocate for the bedside nurse, as well as a conference speaker (see her at AACN NTI this May) and the nurse consultant for Critical Care: The Game, a multiplayer board game designed by Lakshman Swamy, MD to teach others about ICU.

Dr. Brian Weirich

Brian is Chief Nursing Officer for Banner Health’s Thunderbird hospital. Prior to his role at Banner, Brian held nursing leadership roles at Indiana University Health, University of Colorado Health, Ohio State Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic where he started as a nurse in the ICU.  

Brian has a Doctorate degree in Health Administration from the Medical University of South Carolina and a Masters degree in Healthcare Administration from Ohio University where he also obtained his Bachelor degree in nursing.  Brian is certified in Executive Nursing Practice and has a certification in Artificial Intelligence from Northwestern’s Kellogg school of business.  

Brian is an author/speaker often arguing for the importance of the millennial “tech” generation.  He is a co-author of the book, THE NURSES GUIDE TO INNOVATION. In 2017, he began exploring artificial intelligence and crowd sourcing along with the benefits of gig economy workforces to solve existing problems. Brian is active in the healthcare startup community where he advises and sits on boards for small tech startups.  He is a recipient of the Advancement in Medicine innovation grant; from IU School of Medicine.

In his free time, Brian and his wife Lauren (also a nurse) and their five children Autumn, Tenley, River, Asher, and Brighton, enjoy everything about the outdoors and can often be found on a trail or mountainside having family adventures.