Emily Jerry Foundation Presentation at BD Leadership Summit in Las Vegas

Just got home last night from the BD GCS Leadership Summit that was held this past week in Las Vegas, it was a great event.  I feel so blessed to have been given the opportunity to share Emily’s story and all the important lessons that have been learned since her tragic death in 2006 from a sterile IV compounding error.  After my presentation, which was very well received, I was extremely grateful for the individual conversations that I was able to have throughout the day with all the wonderful people from BD that were in attendance from around globe.  Everyone I spoke with was eager to talk about the Emily Jerry Foundation and our programming, however I was pleased to see that they seemed especially interested in our National Pharmacy Technician Initiative & Interactive Scorecard.  They were very enthusiastic, about finding ways in which we will work together going forward to improve the grades in the different states in their regions. I truly felt like we were all on the same page, all of us, understanding and agreeing, that this is an enormous public safety issue, and by improving individual state scores, we can immediately make the residents of those states safer together, ultimately saving countless lives!

I’ve always said, had the facility where Emily died, had simple barcode verification technology implemented in their workflow, that horrible day the pharmacy technician made the compounding error, my little girl would still be with us today.  As I recently mentioned, in an editorial I co-authored in the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacists, the use of barcode technology is widespread at retail checkout counters, yet sadly, the technology is only being used in one-third of healthcare facilities preparing medications going directly into a patient’s circulatory system. This is exactly why I feel so strongly that IV workflow systems save lives and that systems like BD’s Pyxis IV Prep, absolutely MUST become a standard of care, as soon as possible.  This is a vital issue that affects each and every one of us, and more importantly, all of our loved ones, due to the simple fact that we ALL receive healthcare during the course of our lifetime!