Repost from Bichoy Gabra, RPh, CPh, PhD, Manager – Oncology Infusion Pharmacy Services at Moffitt Cancer Center
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Honored to hear and meet Christopher Jerry, President and CEO of the Emily Jerry Foundation for Patient Safety and Safe Medication Practices.
As we celebrate Healthcare Risk Management Week at Moffitt Cancer Center, Chris gave an amazing presentation to the Pharmacy Team today highlighting the mission of his foundation:
“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.”
Chris has been a relentless patient safety and clinician advocate who spreads a message of hope, FORGIVENESS, compassion, and collaboration, by turning an unimaginable tragedy, into inspiring positive change, globally in healthcare, in honor of his daughter Emily.
Chris lost his beautiful and beloved two-year-old daughter, Emily, after a fatal medication error in March of 2006.
Emily was scheduled to receive the last dose of etoposide to treat a yolk sac tumor over a weekend. The order was entered incorrectly as a stat order. The short-staffed Pharmacy team compounded it using sodium chloride 23.4% w/v solution instead of the desired sodium chloride 0.9% w/v solution while the Pharmacy computer system was down.
This error led to fatal consequences for Emily, forever changing the lives of her family and the healthcare community across the country.
The “Emily’s law” was signed in 2009 by Ohio legislatures: Pharmacy Technicians be at least 18 years of age, register with the State Board of Pharmacy and pass a Board-approved competency exam.
The legislation also includes specific provisions related to technician training/education and criminal records.
This past week, it was great to see so many friends & colleagues I’ve been blessed to work with in medication safety, over the past 13 years, at the ASHP Summer Meeting in Phoenix!
It was also such a pleasure to actually have the opportunity to meet three of the five Medication Safety Scholars, in person, and also have the privilege of co-presenting with the faculty from this past inaugural year of the program. The title of our session was, “Learning from Our Mistakes: Engaging the Next Generation of Medication Safety Leaders.” I’m elated to be able to say that our very first year for the Medication Safety Scholars Program, far exceeded all my expectations and was a huge success!
Now it’s off to the next one…this morning, I’m heading to New Orleans, where I’m looking forward to speaking at the NICA 2022 Annual Conference tomorrow!!
Due to the pandemic, for the past few years, I’ve had to give all my patient & medication safety presentations for the Emily Jerry Foundation virtually. As a result, I have been hoping and praying that I would be able to get back to doing the live speaking engagements again, as soon as possible. After being submersed working with the clinician caregivers in the various modalities in healthcare, for well over a decade now, I was really starting to miss the direct interaction. Well, I’m pleased to say that my prayers were answered, and much more abundantly than I ever anticipated!
Along those lines, this month began on such a great note. Last Friday, June 3rd, I felt blessed to be able give a keynote at the first inaugural Pacific Coast Patient Safety Conference, in Long Beach, California. It’s always wonderful to have the opportunity to meet and attend the educational sessions of other likeminded people, who are just as passionate about patient & medication safety as I am. In addition, it was also great catching up with all those that I truly respect and have had the privilege of working with over the years that I haven’t seen in person in quite a while.
For these reasons, even though next week is going to be extremely busy and my travel schedule a bit hectic, I’m truly looking forward to ALL of it! The following are my next three upcoming events. If you’re planning on attending, I really look forward to connecting with you!
-Monday, June 13th, ASHP Summer Meeting, Phoenix, AZ
-Friday, June 17th, NICA 2022 Annual Conference, New Orleans, LA
-Monday, June 20th, Moffit Cancer Center, Tampa, FL
I’m really looking forward to heading to California next month, feeling extremely blessed & privileged to have been asked to give a keynote at the upcoming inaugural Pacific Coast Patient Safety Conference!
To learn more about this wonderful event being hosted for all modalities, including front line nursing, pharmacy, medical professionals & leaders, etc., by the California Society of Health – System Pharmacists (CSHP) and the Chapman University School of Pharmacy (CUSP), just click on the following link: https://www.cshp.org/page/pcpsc_2022
Really looking forward to speaking at the National Infusion Center Association (NICA)’s upcoming annual conference in New Orleans June 17th and 18th. If you’re attending, I look forward to connecting with you! #NICA2022
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!
I was grateful to have been given this opportunity to share my daughter Emily’s story, the valuable lessons learned from her preventable medication error, and the vital mission of the Emily Jerry Foundation, in this WeInfuse podcast I did earlier this week.
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“Always stay vigilant and proactive about where human error could creep into your pharmacy and clinical workflow. Never lose sight of the human side of your process. That patient is someone’s child, mother, – take 20 seconds to pause and stay focused”
– Christopher Jerry – The Emily Jerry Foundation
Thank you Chris for sharing your story and your mission on our WeInfuse podcast. Your story is inspiring and we share your mission to reduce and eliminate the human side of medication errors.
In May of 2011, five years after my daughter Emily’s tragic death, and shortly after his release from jail, I was blessed with the opportunity to publicly forgive Eric Cropp. I have always felt that, if we were going to prevent what happened to my daughter, from happening to others, then the focus needed to be put back on fixing the broken systems, processes, and protocols, that enable these types of tragedies to occur in hospitals in the first place. To that point, when the focus is put on implementing punitive measures, vilifying those involved, and even criminalizing the medical error, then many of the key contributing factors often get overlooked and do not get addressed at all, such as those that set Eric and the pharmacy technician up for failure that horrible day. With these thoughts in mind, I believe that if we are truly going to save lives from preventable medication errors, we must accept the fact that ALL humans are fallible and capable of making a very “human error,” and design systems around that fact.
If you are a pharmacist, pharmacy technician, or a nurse, I encourage you to please consider registering at freeCE and joining our host Kevin Hope, Eric Cropp, and I this evening!
Three years ago, on February 22nd 2019, I was almost killed by a Mack truck that ran a red light and broadsided the driver’s side of my car. I still have injuries I’m being treated for, but it’s only by God’s grace, that I even survived the accident! In fact, tomorrow, which happens to be my daughter Emily’s birthday, I’m scheduled to have back surgery. So yesterday, as I was preparing for my upcoming hospital stay, and just before my board meeting for the Emily Jerry Foundation, I felt so grateful and blessed to receive this very kind email correspondence. God’s timing is always perfect! The mere fact that Emily’s legacy continues to live on in the hearts and minds of so many, truly means a lot to me!
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Hello!
My name is Gracie. I am a care assistant at a Children’s Hospital in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. I just heard about Emily’s story from a module we were asked to watch for work. I know that a tough time of year is coming up for you and your family in this next week, so I wanted to reach out to tell you that her story is still being heard and impacting people around the world!
Thank you for sharing about your beautiful daughter. I know she is so proud of how her family is remembering her!
I will be praying for Emily, as well as you and your family this week!
From, Gracie
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.
Last Updated: July 20, 2022 by Nick Pietravoia
Annual National Infusion Center Association (NICA) 2022 Conference in New Orleans
After the ASHP Meeting in Phoenix last week, I flew to New Orleans, where I was invited to speak at the Annual National Infusion Center Association (NICA) 2022 Conference. I spoke about the vital importance of accreditation & setting standards, as it relates to always putting medication & patient safety first, for EVERY patient, at infusion therapy centers across the nation.
These types of facilities offer a wonderful service. They provide convenient and comfortable care in a much smaller clinical setting, giving them the ability to really focus on each patient individually, ensuring patients never feel like just a number. In this way, these infusion therapy centers are providing extremely compassionate care, so their patients can receive their ongoing chemotherapy regimens and various other prescribed IV medications, from experienced nurse practitioners and a clinical team that they actually end up becoming well acquainted with during the course of their treatment, while at the same time, this takes the burden off the larger hospitals and healthcare facilities, as well…bottom line, the patients receive outstanding and, most of all, SAFE care at a much lower cost!!