EAHP represents over 30,000 hospital pharmacists across 37 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 professional
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.
Selection, Procurement and Distribution
BERTA MONTERO-PASTOR, ELSA IZQUIERDO-GARCÍA, LORENA DE AGUSTÍN SIERRA, ISMAEL ESCOBAR RODRIGUEZ
The unprecedented mass COVID-19 vaccination has highlighted the need to develop strategies that prioritize and optimize the use of resources. Strategies have been established at the national and community levels, however, each center must implement its own plan according to needs and capabilities for its target population.
A Pharmacy Department (PD) vaccination plan including strategies to optimize human and material resources available to deal with mass COVID-19 vaccination.
In plan development, we considered the type of vaccines, storage requirements, the need for specific equipment and workflows, limited vaccine vial supply, and aspects related to staff in the PD.
A standard operating procedure (SOP) was developed for logistic management of vaccine orders, including an SOP for nursing staff if the shipment arrived outside the PD schedule.
For storage, specific space was provided considering the different storage requirements.
The doses corresponding to the vaccination of health professionals and patients from group 7 of the national vaccination strategy (onco-hematologic patients with active treatment, hemodialysis patients, primary immunodeficiencies, HIV -CD4<200cel/ml, Down Syndrome ≥40 years) were prepared centrally in the PD. For the general population, a centralized preparation in PD is not feasible. So, alternatively, PD developed a dispensing circuit and informative material for nursing staff for the correct dosage and traceability of vial batches.
In all stages, the use of vials was optimized with strategies such as the selection of adequate packaging material, the grouping of patients, or the exchange of vials between vaccination centers.
We received 16230 vaccine vials from four different commercial brands. There have been no incidents related to the receipt and storage of vaccines.
A total of 9753 doses were made. In the whole elaboration process, we only wasted a vial on one occasion and a dose on another.
We dispensed 11911 vaccine vials to the general population. Of these, 13 vials were discarded due to errors in the preparation.
The development of a specific plan has made it possible to optimize the COVID-19 vaccination process in our hospital. The plan will be adapted and updated according to the updates of the national and community vaccination strategies.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Jon Michaeli, Bryan Li
The novel delivery method provides an on-demand option for senior citizens at higher risk of serious Covid-19 infections to receive health essentials while maintaining social distancing. The program launched before Covid-19 vaccines were publicly available, and was sustained during a period of especially intense Covid-19 spread in the US from Nov 2020 – Jan 2021.
In early May 2020, Matternet, CVS, and UPS launched direct-to-consumer drone delivery of prescription medicines and other health goods to The Villages, the United States’s largest retirement community with more than 135,000 residents. The operations have expanded in scope since and are ongoing
The drone flights were conducted by Matternet’s M2V9 UAV platform and drew upon the companies’ experience operating other US healthcare drone networks. Deliveries are dispatched from CVS store 8381 and flown to New Covenant United Methodist Church, with final delivery to front porches via golf cart. This is an important milestone on the journey to drone delivery to individual homes at scale.
Matternet and UPS have completed 2,500+ deliveries to date. The partnership has expanded operations to Elan Buena Vista, another retirement community nearby. The program’s success helped pave the way for other healthcare drone programs, including a new route at Wake Forest Baptist where Matternet and UPS are transporting Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines (first ever in the US).
Full automation achieved via Matternet’s proprietary drone port, the “Station,” will permit pharmaceutical drone delivery at scale and accelerate the roll-out of city-wide networks that give pharmacists more flexibility around where and how patients receive medicines. These networks will support and accelerate the shift to tele-health and “hospital at home” as well as just-in-time inventory management, with significant potential to reduce medical waste through stock centralization. First commercial deployment of the Station occurred in Lugano, Switzerland in September 2021. The same month, Matternet announced a partnership with the Abu Dhabi Department of Health and the UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority to launch a city-wide medical network serving 40+ locations by 2023. Similar systems are planned for Europe, in cities such as Zurich, Berlin and Athens.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Theodora Steindl-Schönhuber, Gittler G.
Medication dispensing is a time-consuming, labour-intensive, error-prone process in the daily routine on the wards. The project was triggered by the tight personnel situation during the Coronavirus pandemic: In November 2020 three wards with COVID-19 patients (91 beds) were integrated into our Unit Dose blister service to assist the nursing staff. A multidisciplinary effort (management, IT-department, doctors, nursing staff, pharmacy holding a GMP-manufacturer´s certificate) and long-established electronic patient records including medication data enabled fast realisation.
After transformation back to a chirurgical, an internal and a geriatric ward the service was continued and extended to the neurological unit (49 beds) due to positive feed-back. We wanted to study the observed positive effects of Unit Dose supply in more detail.
In our hospital medication distribution has been switched from manual dispensing by ward staff to automated Unit Dose blister packaging by the pharmacy. Our study investigates the impacts of this change on medication safety, staff satisfaction, time and drug resources.
The percentage of pharmacy-blistered drugs, time gain for nursing staff, employee satisfaction, medication consumption and erroneous blister fillings were investigated.
Unit Dose in hospitals is not standard for many countries and is so far unique in Austria. Therefore, we would like to share our experiences and findings with our colleagues: Solid, oral dosage forms could be supplied by 99% via Unit Dose. Time for manual drug dispensing was reduced by 75%. A survey showed high employee satisfaction with the supply process as well as the quality and correctness of the blisters. Consumption of blisterable drugs and stocks on the ward were reduced by 44% and 78%, respectively. Errors in blister fillings in our setting amount to 0,006%. When compared to literature references on error rates for manual medication dispensing (up to low double-digit rates), patients benefit from increased drug therapy safety. On the basis of these results our initiative was granted the Austrian Patient Safety Award 2021 in the field of medication safety.
We plan to extend Unit Dose to the remaining wards and to investigate patient satisfaction with the blisters, cost-efficiency and distribution of high-cost medications.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
To avoid stock breaks by ensuring at all times the existence of the medicines included in a 2nd level hospital.
Optimization of medication management in a Hospital Pharmacy Service (HPS) through the development and use of a purchasing planner.
One obstacle we encountered was knowing the inventory in real time. This required a computer program for stock management, human resources or intelligent warehouses to enable real-time inventory control.
After the training, learning and updating of working procedures, an analysis of the consumption of the drugs included in the pharmacotherapy guide was carried out in order to calculate the minimum stocks, safety stocks, maximum stocks and order points.
Data were loaded into the management software and parameters were defined so that when a drug reached the point of order a purchase proposal would be made until the maximum stock was reached.
In February 2020, the purchasing planning system was implemented. The planner’s lists were parameterized to organize the drugs by therapeutic groups or areas of interest within the HPS. In addition, communication among all professionals was enhanced for rapid response to a lack of medication and a periodic inventory counting plan was designed to ensure adequate stock.
After changes, more than 80% of HPS medications are ordered through purchasing planning, reducing stock breaks due to never reaching the safety stock of selected drugs.
This system is applicable to all HPS that has the same management software. It is necessary to have an optimization system in the drug management to ensure their real stock in the hospital environment and their availability for patients.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Mirna Momcilovic, Anita Simic, Petra Turcic
Croatia was hit by 2 big earthquakes in 2020, both happened just right after 1st and 2nd lockdown due to high number of COVID-19 cases. Since most of the hospitals were strategically built on the hills, it was more destructive for them. It also hit a number of community pharmacies responsible for drugs supply to specific areas in the country. There was no electricity, no heating, no drugs supply, no fridge to store drugs, for days, so quick back-up plan was needed to provide minimal healthcare.
Croatian hospital pharmacists organised a temporary pharmacy in a tent, filled it with drugs and medical products donated from community pharmacies, hospitals and wholesalers from Croatia and other European countries and started supplying patients with it.
It was modified way of dispensing, without prescription because there was no doctors and no place to prescribe it, based on patient’s medical documentation, if available, and patient’s medication history according to what patient said only. Pharmacists needed to use their knowledge about dosing, duration of action – difference between immediate release or modified release formulations, possibility of splitting tablets into equal parts to get the needed dose and, most important, substituting drugs from the same pharmacologic class (ex. switching from one inhaler for treatment of asthma containing ICS + LABA to another one that was available at the moment), taking into consideration patient’s needs and avoiding drug to drug interactions. Pharmacists provided patients with OTC drugs, free of charge, followed by an advice of how to use it. Non having prescription problem was solved afterwards by Croatian Health Insurance Fund. Also, all the supply of vaccine against COVID-19 available in Croatia at that point, was sent to an area hit by the earthquake. Vaccination was done by doctors, and pharmacists assisted by supplying them with all the equipment needed (needles, alcohol, cotton wool, etc.).
Patients were supplied by all the drugs/medical products needed in the first, critical week after an earthquake.
Following the Croatian example of handling an earthquake situation, there is an idea of organising a medical crisis team, would include pharmacist, in each European country.
Selection, Procurement and Distribution
Francisco José Toja Camba, Carmen Lopez Doldan, Laura Casado Vazquez, Aron Misa García, Pilar Rodriguez Rodriguez, Maria Elena Gonzalez Pereira
Hospital Pharmacy must develop new models of pharmaceutical care (PC), improving patients quality of life and enhancing care services. One type of these strategies are non face-to-face PC, such as telepharmacy and home delivery, achieving a new integrated and patient-centered healthcare model.
COVID-19 health crisis and the need to ensure the delivery of medicines to susceptible people and guarantee home isolation, has motivated a paradigm shift in health care.
• Guarantee quality of care in pharmacy consultations (PCC) due to COVID-19 pandemic.
• Implantation of telepharmacy and home delivery of hospital medication.
Three different circuits were designed:
1. Single healthcare act of face-to-face visits in PCC coinciding with other medical appointments. Prior appointment, non-contact consultation agendas and extension of service hours were reinforced.
2. Informed home delivery of hospital medication at home, after prior teleconsultation: pharmacotherapeutic follow-up and request for informed consent. Management and preparation of packages, including motivational messages, to humanize the process. Distribution logistics model based on defined routes and schedules. The confidentiality, security and traceability of the entire process was certified.
3. Open and permanent communication channel between patient and pharmacist that enabled individualized PC.
Patients with mobility problems, home isolation or chronic processes with a higher risk of COVID-19 infection were prioritized.
From March to May 2020, 1,938 pharmacotherapeutic follow-up teleconsultations were carried out (291 patients had been attended in person due to having another medical appointment or due to personal preferences). Medication was home delivered to a total of 1,647 patients. A total of 120 routes were made between the four established routes (average of 15 shipments per working day). Percentage of satisfaction expressed by the patients was 95%.
Main limitations were:
1. Operational challenge: changes in workflows, organization of schedules and work times, increase in telephone lines, route management in a very dispersed geographic area, technology gap (mean age ≥ 60 years) …
2. Human resources.
3. Medication shipping cost.
• Development of new management tools: telepharmacy and home delivery and pharmacotherapeutic follow-up of patients guarantee continuity of non-face-to-face PC.
• We must support initiatives that certify efficient and safe care as well as humanitarian care.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
The purpose of the report was to investigate and share what benefit opportunities exist because of the introduction of the EU FMD barcode.
EFPIA, the industry association, commissioned a report to investigate what benefits had occurred in the hospital setting, following the introduction of the EU Falsified Medicines Directive (EU FMD).
www.be4ward.com/benefits-beyond-eu-falsified-medicines-directive/
The author worked directly with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in the UK and AZ Sint-Maarten in Belgium. In addition, he reviewed various relevant case studies and publications.
The report demonstrates benefits exist at all points in the hospital supply chain, where packs are handled, stored and processed. Opportunities also exist to web enable the product to provide digital content and services to healthcare providers and patients.
The introduction of standardised barcodes and product identification enables hospitals to leverage benefits opportunities which were difficult to realise before this level of harmonisation and barcoding prevalence.
• The costs of operating the EU FMD can be minimised, integrating with normal operations and leveraging the use of conveyor systems and robotics are successfully reducing the workload impact by up to an expected 80%.
• Barcodes and product identification brings impressive financial benefits to those hospitals which leverage them. In one hospital they were able to save £4 million through the reduction of over ordering products. In another, the improved accuracy and speed in the recharging of procedures identified £840K in lost revenues in a single year.
Scanning barcodes, is being used to deliver value across all three of the benefit opportunity areas: Improved Patient Safety, Enhanced Clinical Effectiveness and Operational Efficiencies. It is possible to offset the costs of EU FMD implementation and operation through the additional benefits.
Share the report findings to enable hospitals to leverage the opportunities of the EU FMD barcode.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Serdar Kaya, Ulker Sener
Despite medical devices and supplies are often high-cost products, they are often sub-optimally managed by hospitals. The objectives of the installation were the optimization and the automation of the inventory, and the charge management workflows, to comply with JCI (Joint Commission International) standards and address current challenges as safety, labor, stock-outs, space, costs and charges accountancy, traceability.
An integrated Inventory Management and automation solution was implemented at Amerikan Hospital Istanbul (BD Pyxis™ SupplyStation™ system). 83 automated dispensing cabinets, a central management system, and a data analytics solution, are serving the 278-beds hospital.
The workflows for medical devices/supply inventory, and for patients charge management were mapped pre-installation and major challenges identified. Based on these needs, the decision to automate the hospital supply management was made. The cabinets were installed in the whole hospital but in particular in operating rooms, emergency rooms and intensive care units.
The impact of automation was measured one-month pre and one-month post installation, and five major areas of improvements have been identified:
1) Significant decrease in workload: -8% for nurses; -30% for charge secretaries
2) Missing charge rate reduced from 2.5% to 0.1%
3) Improved use of space and material organization
4) Inventory optimization: 0% stock-out, -16% expired items; – 45% on-hand inventory
5) Improved materials and patients’ safety, ensuring that supply were managed in the right way by the right staff. Patients are now protected by the risk of being provided with the wrong device.
All the nurses (n>50) were interviewed, reporting great satisfaction and ease of use with the new system. Furthermore, a positive return on investment was achieved in 4 years.
Due to legal regulations (MDR Regulation/ UDI Tracking requirements) the hospital is planning to leverage the automated system to achieve a full compliance and traceability of critical medical devices throughout their hospital.
The decision of investing in automation demonstrated important benefits in terms of safety and efficiency, with a positive impact on the hospital’s economy as well.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
PILAR PACHECO, MIGUEL ÁNGEL CARVAJAL, JAVIER IBAÑEZ, LYDIA FRUCTUOSO, PAULA TORRANO, MARIA HERNÁNDEZ, JUAN ANTONIO GUTIERREZ, JOAQUIN PLAZA
Since the covid 19 pandemic, the hospital environment has become a place of risk, especially for the oncological and immuno-depressed patient, so it is important to reduce the exposure of the patient and the risk of covid19 infection.
The pharmacy service (PS) has designed this new delivery circuit for supportive treatment (master suspension formula for mucositis and colony-stimulating factors) with the aim of reducing the risk of Covid-19 infection associated with the hospital environment.
The circuit and the main stages are:
1. The MDH orderly comes to the PS to deposit the medical prescriptions of the patients who are receiving treatment at that time.
2. The PT prepares the treatment of each patient, always checking that prescriptions and the date of the current day. If it is a continuation of treatment, the PT will verify that the same dose is maintained and will proceed to dispense the medication with the dispensing program. If it is a new treatment or a change in dose, the PT will notify the pharmacist so that he must validate the prescription first and then the PT can dispense it.
3. The prepared medication, together with its information sheet, is placed in bags that are identified with the patient’s name pending let the orderly come to remove them.
The circuit was implemented in January 2021, after analyzing the risks that excessive wandering around the hospital poses for immunosuppressed patients, including stays in the PS waiting room.
Since the implantation of the circuit, have been dispensed: 43 suspension formula for mucositis, 25 filgrastim, 12 darbepoetin and 11 pegfilgrastim. So far, the circuit has operated in a coordinated way, contributing to the improvement patient care, avoiding wandering through crowded areas, without giving up individualized care.
The fact of preventing patients from going to the pharmacy waiting room to withdraw their support treatment, which in most cases they carry continuously and know very well, supposes a decrease in hospital ambulation and thus reduces the risk of infection by covid 19.
Selection, Procurement and Distribution
Andreia Fernandes, Mafalda Brito, Tatiana Mendes, Armando Alcobia
Many patients had their health care needs compromised due to accessibility issues. They could not come to the PS because of the mandatory confinement, prophylactic isolation and medical indication.
In the context of the Covid 19 pandemic, between April and June 2020, pharmaceutical Services (PS) instituted several alternatives delivery processes that guaranteed patients’ access to the medication, usually provided on the PS.
Pre-existing accessibility projects to deliver medication in community and hospital pharmacies have been adopted. In order to respond to all requests, new ways and protocols of medication distribution/delivery, like city hall transport, courier services and humanitarian aid (for example, motards), were created. For all deliveries outside PS, pharmaceutical telephone follow-up (teleconsultation) was realized.
7448 medication dispensations were registered, of which 80.7% were realized in person in the hospital PS (n = 6679). In the homolog period, 10621 dispensations were registered, of which 95.9% were in person (n = 10183).
438 deliveries were sent to community pharmacies, a total of 219 patients (54.3% female, maximum age 100, minimum 9 years). 41% increase compared to 2019. 198 shipments were realized to different hospitals and others healthcare units, corresponding to 120 patients (56 female, maximum age 85, minimum 8 years). 25% increase over the previous year.
New alternatives: City Hall 66 deliveries for 62 patients (58.0% female, minimum age 18, maximum 97 years), other deliveries 35 users (50.7% male, maximum age 94 and minimum age 10 years).
The Covid-19 pandemic triggered a need for adaptive evolution of pre-existing accessibility projects, but also the creation of new protocols and alternative means to respond to all patients who may have their healthcare compromised due to accessibility issues. The positive points were the implementation speed, maintenance of adherence to therapy (teleconsultation), traceability, reduced costs, synergy between patients/associations/pharmacists/healthcare professionals and a high degree of satisfaction. In spite of some limitations (dependent on volunteering; need for human resources; structured communication) we aspire to improve the new approaches of medication delivery on a nation level.
