The following is a great letter of recommendation we received from Washington State Patient Safety Coalition for the talk we gave in Seattle a few weeks ago. The Emily Jerry Foundation is proud to be associated with the WPSC and hopes to further our mutual vision of a more safe environment for patients around the country. Thank you so much for your support!
Click on the Image below to download a pdf of the letter.
Lisa and I had the chance to meet John J. Nance (keynote speaker for this event) last week at the premier of “Surfing The Healthcare Tsunami; Bring Your Best Board.” John is a great guy that is also featured in the documentary. We are very excited to take part in this opportunity to spread the message.
Last May, Dr. Charles Denham of TMIT brought Eric Cropp and I together for the very first time for an interview, since my daughter Emily’s tragic death. Emily died from a medication error that occurred only days after her second birthday in 2006. Shortly after establishing The Emily Jerry Foundation in 2009, I had explained to a number of people, including Dr. Denham, how and why I felt so strongly about publicly forgiving Eric for the death of my beautiful little girl Emily. Many people simply thought I had completely lost my mind and could not comprehend or understand why, as Emily’s father, I would ever want to take such a drastic step.
Dr. Denham has produced other very successful patient safety documentaries like “Chasing Zero”, narrated by Dennis Quaid. After discussing this particular issue of “forgiveness” at great length with him over the phone in 2010, he called me at the beginning of 2011, and proposed getting Eric and I together for what he referred to as a “healing moment”. This life changing interview will be featured in “Surfing the Healthcare Tsunami: Bring Your Best Board”. I will be attending the documentary premiere in Washington DC at the National Press Club next Friday April 27th. This film then airs for the first time the next morning on the Discovery Channel April 28th. It will also be aired May 5th, May 12th, and May 19th at 8:00 AM local time, however check listings in your time zone as some carriers vary in broadcast regions. You can read more about the premiere by visiting the SafetyLeaders.org website by clicking here.
The primary rationale for wanting to forgive Eric publicly for Emily’s death was simply due to the fact that, at no time did I ever feel he had any malice towards my daughter. Nor do I believe he ever meant my beautiful daughter any harm whatsoever. In fact, I have never felt that any one individual was responsible. It has always been quite the contrary. To this day, I truly believe that my little girl died as a result of two primary reasons. The first was due to a number of inherent systemic flaws that had existed in the pharmacy workflow that day that ultimately led up to the horrible error being made that tragically took my Emily’s life. Secondly, I truly believe that the Ohio State Pharmacy Board, at that time, should have really been held culpable in Emily’s death. The reason I say this is due to the simple fact that it was determined that a pharmacy technician had actually made the fatal error that had killed Emily. After the incident, the pharmacy technician had mentioned that she never really knew that highly concentrated sodium chloride (salt) could actually kill people. With that in mind, I have always asked myself why the Ohio State Pharmacy Board at that time, had absolutely no training requirements, licensing requirements, or oversight of pharmacy technicians in the state of Ohio? To make matters worse, they had to know that pharmacy technicians were being used on a daily basis at all of Ohio’s medical facilities to routinely compound IV medications going directly into patient’s circulatory systems. With that being said, I believe the Ohio State Pharmacy Board was really not doing their primary job, which was to protect the residents of their state from unsafe pharmacy practices. Bottom line, as Emily’s father, had I known that there would have been a very high likelihood, or probability, that a pharmacy technician who had little, to no, training would have been compounding my daughter’s IV medications, I never would have allowed it to happen. I would have insisted that only a registered pharmacist, with years and years of training, prepare all of Emily’s IV medications during the course of her treatment.
Special thanks to the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) for covering the Emily Jerry foundation in the April 2012 edition of AAMI News. We truly appreciate all their support in shedding light on our cause. An excerpt of the article is below:
Six years ago, Chris Jerry was going to surprise his 2-year-old daughter Emily with the best present she could ask for, which wasn’t a toy or even a pony. It was that she no longer had cancer.
But he never got to tell her.
On Feb. 26, 2006, Emily underwent one last chemotherapy treatment to eliminate residual cancer cells from the yolk sac tumor she had battled for six months, but something went terribly wrong.
When Jerry got to Rainbow Babies& Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, OH, that day, his daughter was already unconscious from an unbearable amount of pain.
“I just remember opening the door and my wife at the time had this look of horror on her face,” he told AAMI News.
I was interviewed after the Quality & Patient Safety fair at University Hospitals Case Medical Center by Cleveland’s News Channel 5 about the Emily Jerry Foundation and my speech to UH staff that afternoon. Watch the video footage below and click here to read the full story.
After my speech at University Hospitals on Wednesday, MedCity News came out with a story highlighting the event. They noted the importance of the fact that I was addressing the hospital staff at the very site my daughter’s tragic death occurred. The event was filled with hope though, because as we continue to move forward and bring our minds together I feel confident we are positively impacting patient safety around the country.
My beautiful Emily would have been eight years old a few days ago on February 24th. Words cannot express how it feels, or how meaningful it is as Emily’s father, to be honoring my little girl by announcing our foundation’s new program, The Emily Jerry Pediatric Safe Patient Initiative and by giving this very important keynote speech at University Hospitals to begin National Patient Safety Week. The Emily Jerry Foundation has been working closely with University Hospitals over the past year, to find effective ways to collaborate in the area of patient safety, learning from Emily’s story, and trying to prevent similar errors from occurring again.
The following is the official poster University Hospitals will be posting internally. Click the image below to download a pdf with all the event details…
2012 is ramping up quite nicely for the Foundation. We have a major speaking engagement for The Delaware Valley Society of Health-System Pharmacists scheduled for February 21st in Conshohocken, PA. This event is titled “Intravenous Medication Compounding: Lessons Learned from a Fatal Error and Recommendations for Best Practices.”
The speakers include myself, Eric Cropp, and my good friend Michael Cohen, President of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices. We are hoping to continue to make a worthwhile impact with our story and this event promises to be another great opportunity to do just that.
To read all the details of the event click on the image below to download the pdf…
I am truly excited to travel to Huntsville, Alabama this March to take part in the 2012 Patient Safety Symposium. As I have found my calling in being a Patient Safety Advocate each presentation seems to become more and more important. I am honored and humbled to have been asked to attend. This will be a great event, hopefully I’ll see some of you there!
To read all the details about the event click on the image below…
The Emily Jerry Foundation is determined to help make our nation’s, world renowned, medical facilities safer for everyone, beginning with our babies and children. We are accomplishing this very important objective by focusing on increasing public awareness of key patient safety related issues and identifying technology and best practices that are proven to minimize the “human error” component of medicine. Through our ongoing efforts The Emily Jerry Foundation is working hard to save lives every day.
Posted: June 5, 2012 by ejfadmin
Protect Your Families and Loved Ones from Preventable Medication Errors.
As Emily’s father, had I known this one little detail…. Emily would still be here today!
Your babies, children, and loved ones are unknowingly being put at serious risk and could die exactly the same way Emily tragically died. Find out exactly what you can do today to keep your family and friends safe from these types of all too common medical errors. More importantly, we will show you ways that you can effectively protect them from dying from a similar senseless and horrific death!
Did you know that in 2012, six years after Emily died at the hands of a poorly trained pharmacy technician, and there are still five states with absolutely NO requirements for technicians who routinely compound IV medications on a daily basis? Furthermore, the individual state boards of pharmacy in these five states have no oversight, whatsoever, of pharmacy technicians in their respective states. With that being said, does it seem as though these state boards of pharmacy are really doing their primary job, which is to protect the residents of their states from unsafe pharmacy practice?
• New York
• Pennsylvania
• Michigan
• Colorado
• Washington DC
If you live in one of these states, or any state that loosely regulates pharmacy technicians, you can protect yourself and the ones you love immediately. Most people are not aware that it is well within your rights when you, or a loved one, go into any medical facility in our nation for treatment of any kind, to request that a registered pharmacist prepare, any and all, IV medications during the entire course of your stay! This is something you should always insist on prior to the treatment or procedure and it is imperative that you get this in writing from an administrator in authority at the facility where you or your children are being treated. As Emily’s father, had I known this one little detail, Emily would still be here today!
If you are truly as concerned as I am about this very important public safety issue, I would urge you to contact your state’s board of pharmacy, as well as, your state legislators immediately. In addition, please continue to visit the The Emily Jerry Foundation website (www.emilyjerryfoundation.org) for new and updated information regarding our new National Campaign for Improved Pharmacy Technician Training and Oversight that we look forward to introducing in the coming weeks. I am also pleased to say that this new campaign is a very important part of The Emily Jerry Pediatric Safe Patient Initiative that just began earlier this year.