2021 New Mexico – Rebecca DeMoss

Staff Pharmacist
PharmD, BS
New Mexico
rvanvleck06@gmail.com
PharMerica Pharmacy

Rebecca entered the pharmacy field because she enjoyed the blending of biology and chemistry and helping people; she’s certainly done plenty of the latter, especially since over the course of 2018-2019, she detected 18 inappropriate transdermal (TD) fentanyl prescriptions. In response to these near misses, which almost certainly would have led to death or serious harm of the patients, Rebecca began creating solutions by educating her team and the physicians involved in the prescribing errors. One of her solutions was to develop an internal TD fentanyl dosing protocol for the pharmacy; however, she wanted to do more, so in June 2021, she volunteered to create a presentation about inappropriate prescribing patterns for the annual New Mexico Pharmacist Association convention. Pushing past her initial fear and self-doubt that the topic and her knowledge weren’t good enough to present, Rebecca successfully delivered her presentation to wide acclaim, further fueling her desire to continue spreading her knowledge and passion. From there, Rebecca wrote a blog for TL;DR Pharmacy Simplified, was interviewed on two different podcasts, and to date, she has presented to more than 9,000 people on FreeCE.com, an online continuing education portal for healthcare professionals. “I truly hope these presentations spread this vital information and save lives,” she says.