EAHP represents over 29,000 hospital pharmacists across 36 member countries. EAHP represents and develops the hospital pharmacy profession within Europe in order to ensure the continuous improvement of care and outcomes for patients in the hospital setting. This is achieved through science, research, education, practice, as well as sharing best-practice and responsibility with other healthcare professionals.
The EAHP Board, elected for three-year terms, oversees the association’s activities. Comprising directors responsible for core functions, it meets regularly to implement strategic goals. Supported by EAHP staff, the Board controls finances, coordinates congress organization, and ensures compliance with statutes and codes of conduct.
The EAHP staff supports the Board in executing EAHP’s mission. The Staff assists in financial management, events organisations, policy activities and all EAHP projects. The EAHP staff works closely with EAHP’s members and ensures the effective communication all relevant stakeholders.
The first member countries were Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands in 1972. EAHP has now 36 EAHP members and 2 Associate Members. EAHP is open to countries members of the Council of Europe and since 2022 to organisations representing the interests of hospital pharmacists from outside the Council of Europe (Associate Membership)
EAHP’s structure is also composed by different standing committes: EAHP Scientific Committee, EAHP Education Executive Committee and the EAHP CTF Steering Committee.
At EAHP, we are committed to transparency in our governance, ethical standards, and funding practices. This section provides open access to our foundational documents, including the EAHP Statutes, Code of Conduct, and Funding Sources. By sharing these resources, we aim to uphold accountability and foster trust with our members, partners, and the public.
Keep up with all EAHP’s events and webinars. Contact the team at info@eahp.eu should you have any questions about upcoming events or activities.
Here you can find all upcoming events organised by EAHP and by all its members and associate members. Do not hesitate to contact the events team at events@eahp.eu should you have any questions about the organisation of these events.
Hospital pharmacists conduct a critical role in the care of patients in hospitals. Learn more about what they do here and in all the pages under Hospital Pharmacy practice and Policy.
Self-Assessment
SILCC
Closed SIGs
EAHP brings together experts from many areas of hospital pharmacy practice providing and highlighting good local sustainable practices as that can be up-scaled and shared with other countries. The EAHP Working Group on Sustainability has the aim of reducing the environmental burden of the hospital pharmacy services.
The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP), and its 36 member country platforms are creating a Common Training Framework for the hospital pharmacy education in Europe. The goal of this project is to allow the free movement of hospital pharmacists within the European Union.
The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) and the European Society of Clinical Pharmacy (ESCP) have collaboratively developed the Oath to Society. The Oath to Society is all encompassing and acts as a contract for excellence in providing compassionate patient care, working as part of the healthcare team and advancing the pharmacy profession, and showcasing how clinical and hospital pharmacists work every day
A day created to highlight the importance and to celebrate the work done by hospital pharmacies. This day celebrates all hospital pharmacy teams.
Catch up with EAHP’s press releases
Find all EAHP relevant publication like the EAHP Surveys, annual reports and the history books.
The European Journal of Hospital Pharmacy (EJHP) is the only official journal of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) and is committed to advancing the science, practice and profession of hospital pharmacy. As the premier communication platform for hospital pharmacists worldwide, EJHP is a major source for continuing education as well as updates on advances in the practice and standard of pharmaceutical care for patients.
When EAHP and Hospital pharmacists appear in the news.
EAHP publishes a monthly EU monitor with updates about the latest EAHP initiatives and information relevant for the hospital pharmacy profession.
Sponsor Channel
The Sponsor Channel is designed to maximise visibility and engagement, allowing sponsors to connect with the hospital pharmacy community and partners in a dynamic and interactive environment. From product demonstrations to networking sessions, the Sponsor Channel offers a range of opportunities for sponsors to showcase their offerings and generate leads in the new EAHP Website.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Jorge Esquivel Negrín, Amara Magdalena Pérez, Josephine Peña Hernández, Jenifer González Chávez, Carmen Lidia Díaz Díaz, Silvia González Suárez, Alba Domínguez Hernández, Jaime Muñoz Manrique, Esther González Carrillo, Pilar Díaz Ruiz
PN is a high-risk preparation that carries a significant risk of iatrogenesis, making it essential for staff responsible for its prescription, validation, and preparation to be well-trained, and for a reliable quality assurance plan to be in place. Monthly quality indicators include errors by pharmacists during transcription to nutrition software, errors by technicians in tray preparation, and nursing errors during PN preparation. Acceptable monthly error thresholds were set at 2 for transcription, 25 for tray preparation, and 6 for sterile PN preparation. Additional activity indicators, such as the number of PN preparations per month, episode duration, and reasons for suspension, were also analyzed.
A training program centered on audiovisual resources related to parenteral nutrition (PN) procedures was implemented in a tertiary hospital after a quality assessment within the PN department revealed a decline in certain indicators between 2020 and 2022. A shared folder with video tutorials covering various processes was made available to pharmacy staff, mainly intended for nursing staff and pharmacy technicians, who typically have high turnover rates between departments.
The indicators showed a steady increase in PN preparations, rising from 411±74 per month in 2020 to 475±51 in 2023, with a record of 634 preparations in March 2024. Notably, 18.1% of episodes in 2023 lasted over two weeks, partly due to the underutilization of home PN and a lack of hospital beds despite increased outpatient activity. Errors in tray preparation increased from 2020 to 2022, peaking in 2021. This coincided with high staff turnover and an increased workload. In response, the implementation of video tutorial training for rotating staff was introduced in 2022.
This initiative reduced tray preparation errors, which decreased to an average of 12±4.9 between January 2023 and March 2024.
These measures could be adapted and implemented in other departments within the pharmacy service. Regarding PN, we are now aiming to optimize the workload by promoting home PN, and implementing semi-automated systems such as barcodes and gravimetric control, which are also recommended to improve safety and traceability.
Production and Compounding
F. Gaume, A. Ifrah, S. Vrignaud
In 2023, an evaluation of professional practices (EPP) targeting the risk of microbiological contamination was carried out in our parenteral nutrition production unit. This EPP took the form of an internal observational practice audit and revealed several non-conformities (compliance with disinfectant exposure time, identification of right times for change gloves and performance of surface sampling) requiring the implementation of a structured and collaborative improvement plan.
From January to October 2024, an improvement plan in 3 phases has been performed.
Phase 1 – Audit results: Presentation to unit technicians by pharmacists, followed by a discussion session.
Phase 2 – Development of improvement actions: Brainstorming sessions with the team to generate ideas for corrective actions / Evaluation of proposals collected according to 6 criteria (speed, relevance, feasibility, motivation, safety and cost) using an impact matrix / Creation of a structured action plan based on the selected proposals.
Phase 3 – Implementation of actions: Creation of working groups / Monitoring of the improvement process / Development of a plan to assess the effectiveness of actions.
Phase 1 – Audit results presentation: 2 sessions were held in January 2024 with the 13 technicians of the unit. The discussions allowed us to discuss the non-conformities observed during the audit and ensured understanding of the challenges identified.
Phase 2 – Development of improvement actions: 2 sessions were held in March 2024 /10 improvement actions were listed and evaluated. 4 actions were considered as priority, 4 as recommended and 2 as non-priority / Setting up of a Gantt chart to give an overview of the actions to be carried out, their estimated duration and deadlines.
Phase 3 – Implementation of actions: implementation of the 4 priority actions and the 4 recommended actions / Creation of a quality document concerning glove changes and modification of 8 quality documents / Consideration of ways of evaluating actions: quick audit, questionnaire, etc.
As a follow-up to this work, a questionnaire will be prepared for the technicians to assess the overall approach. A quick audit focusing on glove changes will be introduced soon to assess the impact of the improvement plan.
Production and Compounding
A Elsheashaey, A Elshishiny, A Orabi, A Almutairi, A Aboulwafa, H Alobaid, F Dashti, D Saeed, R Yassin, M Salama
Kuwait Cancer Control Center (KCCC) is the only oncology hospital in Kuwait. Chemotherapy Preparation Unit (CTPU) was unable to meet the increased orders; causing delivery delay and more patients’ waiting time. Moreover; rework and more waste due to defective and faulty processes of current workflow resulting in frequent incident reports of wrong final products dispatched.
Shifting to a systematic multi-step production workflow to increase compounding capacity, minimize risk of errors, reduce processing time, and maximize utilization of integrated technological resources.
Using multiple PDSA cycles, a comprehensive educational and practical training was conducted, proceeded by staff rotation with newly trained team. Every three weeks a new pharmacist trained and assigned to CTPU. Raw materials stores were rearranged for better accessibility and diminishing unnecessary staff movement. A staging step as the first independent double-check before the start of compounding, and for assembly of raw materials and supplies required for compounding. A verification Step as the second independent double-check upon compounding, using bar-code scanners, touchscreens and cross-checking with the chemotherapy order to assure the quality and integrity of the finished product. Production workload were restructured over three parallel line of manual stations and one automated preparation unit. Pharmacy Information System (PIS) screens were customized to give a first and second audio-visual alarms after 30 and 45 minutes of transcription time respectively. Chemotherapy sessions appointment system were established to assess the daily chemotherapy compounding needs from CTPU in advance with an incremental increase of production capacity to reach 100~120 patients/day or 180~200 preparations/day.
Number of preparation compounded by CTPU was increase by 8%, where more than 43% of preparations were validated to release in less than 30 minutes and approximately 88% of preparations were delivered in less than 45 minutes. Number of preparation by automation was increased by 82%, Furthermore, all production incidences has been completely eliminated after full implementation of final verification and validation step.
The new workflow has increase the workload capacity with less production errors and zero incident reports. Patient experience was improved by comparable preparation time to other international Pharmacy Workload Unit and average time required per patient visit.
