The pharmacist who filled a prescription that led to the death of a 3-year-old at Shands at UF will pay a $1,000 fine following a decision from the Florida Board of Pharmacy.
The board's verdict in the case of former Shands pharmacist Edna Irizarry, determined at an Aug. 13 hearing, comes some 10 months after the death of 3-year-old Sebastian Ferrero.
Sebastian was brought to Shands at UF's pediatric unit in October for a routine procedure to check for irregularities in his growth rate.
Sebastian died of a chemical overdose after a Shands nurse injected him with more than 10 times the prescribed dosage of the amino acid arginine.
Arginine is a naturally occurring substance used to test for growth hormone deficiency of the pituitary gland.
Sebastian was given 60 grams of arginine on his Oct. 8 visit. His prescribed dosage was 5.75 grams.
Sebastian died two days later.
Irizarry is to pay a $1,000 fine, plus cover about $2,460 in investigation costs and attend a minimum of eight hours at a continuing education pharmacy course, said Eulinda Jackson, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Health, which oversees the pharmacy board.
Jackson said Irizarry was fined $1,000 because there was ingestion of the medicine she prescribed, and the patient was harmed as a result.
Defendants are fined $250 if the board determines there was no ingestion and no patient harm occurred, she said. If there was ingestion but no harm, a $500 fine is levied, she said.
Board of Pharmacy fines don't necessarily imply fault on the part of the pharmacist, she said.
"The board really believes that she (Irizarry) did everything that they felt that she could have done," Jackson said. "She labeled the drugs correctly, she dispensed the drugs correctly … she correctly labeled the patient's name."
However, Sebastian's family said the Board of Pharmacy should have imposed harsher penalties on Irizarry.
"They decided to propose the minimum penalty to the defendant," said Horst Ferrero, Sebastian's father. "The patient was a 3-year-old happy, healthy boy."
The Ferrero family received an $850,000 settlement from Shands after Sebastian's death. The family plans to put the money toward the construction of a stand-alone children's hospital in Gainesville.
The fund behind the project, the Sebastian Ferrero Foundation, has collected about $400,000 toward its $1 million fundraising goal this year, Ferrero said.
The Ferrero family will match up to $1 million in donations to the foundation, he said.
The total cost of the project will be between $300 and $400 million, Ferrero said.
As for Irizarry, she is no longer an employee of Shands HealthCare, wrote Kim Jamerson, Shands spokeswoman, in an e-mail.
Jamerson wrote that she could not comment on Irizarry's current employment.
Brian A. Kahn, who represented Irizarry in the hearing, could not be reached for comment.
The nurse who administered the arginine to Sebastian, Beth Joyner, is now working as a registered nurse in a UF adult outpatient clinic, Jamerson said.
Joyner does not have records of public discipline, Jackson said.
Jackson could not confirm if Joyner is under investigation by the Board of Health, but Ferrero said an investigation into the nurse's actions is under way.
Ferrero said he hopes to see more results from that investigation than those of Irizarry's hearing.
"We would like for it to be a complete investigation," Ferrero said. "We feel that, so far, the Department of Health has not investigated in the depth that this case requires."
