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 of Germany 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
Annamaria Tesse, Cataldo Procacci, Domenica Ancona, Salvatore Lenti
Often the elderly patient suffers from several pathologies at once and commonly he is in polytherapy. According to the Italian Ministerial Recommendation No. 17, errors in drug therapy can cause serious harm to the patient. By increasing the patient’s awareness and reducing the number of potentially inappropriate prescriptions, it will be possible to improve the effectiveness of therapies and to reduce side effects.
In an Internal Medicine department, the concurrence between doctors and pharmacists has led to a project that aims to reduce duplications of therapy and to improve the health status of the patients. This through pharmacological recognition and subsequent therapeutic reconciliation carried out on patients in discharge.
In Internal Medicine ward, from June to August 2022, we gather the terapies for 48 hospitalised patients aged over 65 years and suffering from two or more chronic diseases. Reconciliation boards were then developed using Intercheck Web a “Mario Negri” Institute of Pharmacological Research’s software. Sequentially the physician, according to the chemist, proceeded to remodulate the therapies especially in those cases where there were serious interactions.
140 drug interactions were detected, on average 2.91 interactions per patient. Especially, 16 class D (very serious), 22 class C (major), 83 class B (moderate), 19 class A (minor) reactions were archived. The modified or partially modified therapies at discharge were 71%. This restriction bought to a curtailment of drugs taken and a removal of unnecessary drugs.
The team are doing a patient follow-up to six months and a year so earlier results will be soon available. Reducing drug intake is possible, and it involves a downsizing in side effects and in an increase in patient compliance. Information to the patient is essential and, by using this procedure on a large scale, it will be possible to optimise the management of the chronic patient at home and inpatient care.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Sabrina Trivellato, Daniele Mengato, Maria Mazzitelli, Anna Maria Cattelan, Francesca Venturini
An optimal compliance is an essential requirement for people living with HIV (PLWHA) to grant drugs effectiveness and safety. Given the complexity of the therapeutic regimen, and the multiple changes to it due to the clinical status, compliance to therapy may be suboptimal. Patients who are not well educated on how to follow their therapy are more keen on quitting the treatment or facing virological failure. According to previous analysis, we reported that 120 patients out of more than 1500 managed by our centre experienced suboptimal adherence to therapy.
We created a user-friendly tool to educate HIV-patients on their drugs’ adherence in our University Hospital.
We studied every drug prescribed in our centre and we analysed it from the patient’s point of view. The question we aimed to answer was: “If I were a PLWHA, what would help me assuming the correct drug, at the proper time, avoiding misunderstandings?”. We analysed the shape, colour and dimensions of both the package and the pills/capsules. We focused on the most appropriate way to take every drug and we investigated possible interactions with OTC drugs or dietary supplements.
A poster reporting all the drugs available in our formulary was developed: 34 medicines were described in alphabetical order, specifying for each one the image of the package, the usual dosage, the picture of the pill/capsule compared to the dimension of current coins and special warnings about possible drug-drug interactions. We also adopted practical symbols to indicate whether to assume the drug with or without food. The poster became available starting from April 2022 and during the following 5 months a cohort of 960 patients could rely on it.
In order to help our patients taking their therapies, we expect to get a digital form of this poster to make it available on the phone scanning a QR code. Alongside, we aim to enlarge and improve this digital version by adding a final section with an interactive survey to closely monitor the compliance of the patients and help them to improve it. Through this project we could also obtain an active pharmacovigilance setting.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Belén Serna Serrano, Victoria Lerma Gaude, Ana Valladolid Walsh, Cristina Del Pozo Carlavilla, Juan Manuel Collado Sanz, Héctor Alabort Ayllón, Eduardo Tébar Martínez, Andrea Drozdz Vergara
In the pharmacist-patient clinical interview (CI), DP-I revision is frequent due to consumption increase of phytotherapy in recent years. The aim of the initiative was to study the degree of discrepancy (DD) based on the severity criteria (SC) found about the recommendations on the management of DP-I. Nowadays there are multiple databases with lack of unification. Patients diagnosed of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) are frequently interviewed by the pharmacist and they often take herbal medicines (HM).
We unified the information collected from the commonly consulted databases of drug-plant interactions (DP-I) whose information could be scarce or contradictory, by creating a tool based on the most consulted plants in our clinical practice (CP).
To create our own DP-I tool, the sources consulted were:
– Our own plant database based on CP. A total of 56 plants.
– Six official databases of DP-I: (A)-Phytotherapy official monographs, (B)-MedInteract®, (C)-Micromedex®, (D)-UpToDate-Lexicomp® (E)-Medscape®.
In order to unify the DP-I information consulted and to be able to identify the DD (0 to 2), the SC for all databases were unified in 3 levels: if the database had 5 levels (1=1-2; 2=3-4; 3=5) or 4 levels (1=1-2; 2=3; 3=4). In first place we decided to test this tool with a small sample size of drugs (6 drugs commonly used for the treatment of MS) to check whether the discrepancy between the databases usually consulted was significant or not.
Finally, 6 DP-I were detected with Hypericum perforatum (HP) and Echinacea angustifolia (EA):
The DD seems to be similar between A-B databases and greater respect to the rest of them. Depending on the database consulted the pharmacist’s performance could change and consequently, pharmaceutical care may be affected. Since this tool was implemented in our CP, none of our MS patients have taken HP or EA, therefore, it has not been necessary to modify their treatment because of DP-I.
This tool could speed up the pharmacological review of possible DP-I and improve decision-making for the care of MS patients. Our next step is to increase the sample of analysed drugs commonly used in other pathologies, such as antiretroviral drugs.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Simone Leoni, Sabrina Guglielmi, Vincenzo Nicola Menditto, Adriana Pompilio, Francesca Vagnoni
During the pandemic, almost all hospital departments were converted in COVID-19 wards and clinicians of several specializations were asked to work in. In a situation characterized by a great number of patients, mainly old and with several comorbidities, health professionals had to employ quickly drugs never used before and supported by limited scientific evidences. In this context the percentage of possible DDI rises out of proportion exposing patients to potential devastating consequences.
During COVID-19 emergency we develop a quick reference tool for clinicians involved in first line assistance to patients. A table summarizing drug-drug interactions (DDI) of the most used therapies was created to allow professionals making the best pharmacological decision.
After a literature review using Micromedex and TERAP (Mario Negri Institute), we have created two table summarizing DDI of lopinavir/ritonavir (LR) and hydroxychloroquine (HC). Those drugs have been grouped according to pharmacological group and clinical relevance. The tables were provided to Infectious Disease, Intensive Care Unit and Emergency Medicine departments.
The tables showed 359 DDI for LR (67% contraindicated/severe, 12% major and 21% moderate) and 176 for HC (96% contraindicated/severe, 1% major and 3% moderate). Almost all contraindicated/severe interactions of HC were the same of LR and regarded: protein kinase inhibitors, beta2 agonists, macrolides and fluoroquinolones antibiotics, some antidepressants, phenothiazines, protease inhibitors and antiarrhythmics. Other LR severe interaction were: factor Xa inhibitors, statins and benzodiazepine derivates. Both LR and HC present moderate interactions with acid pump inhibitors, while LP interacts with Ca and vitamin K antagonists and antiepileptics.
Interactions mentioned have a great impact, since they concern drugs commonly used and hypertension, diabetes, respiratory system disease, cardiovascular disease are the most frequent comorbidities linked to COVID-19. Tables provided had a positive impact in avoiding DDI. Pharmacist was consulted for drug dosing and frequency adjustments. The intervention was fully accepted and extended to the rest of COVID-19 wards.
The project represents a good example of multidisciplinary collaboration able to improve safety and efficacy in pharmacological treatments. The added value of the Pharmacist and the simplicity of the tool make it useful and easy to extend to other healthcare settings.
Selection, Procurement and Distribution
Lierni Goitia Barrenetxea, Natalia Toledo Noda, Moisés Pérez León, Victoria Morales León
Lopinavir/ritonavir is a HIV-1 and HIV-2 proteases inhibitor indicated for HIV. It was used in patients with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test after being recommended by the Chinese health authorities. The hospital protocol guideline was: 400/100mg every 12 hours orally. It was presented in both tablets and oral solution, which was reserved for patients intubated in the ICU and those who were not able to take tablets.
Optimizing the use of lopinavir/ritonavir solution during the state of sanitary emergency.
Descriptive study of resources optimization for lopinavir/ritonavir and actions carried out to ensure the availability of the antiviral in intubated SARS-CoV-2 positive patients. Preparation and stability data were obtained from official sources (Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products) and from the Spanish Society of Hospital Pharmacy.
The Pharmacy Service designed a protocol to repackage lopinavir/ritonavir 80/20mg/mL solution in syringes containing the exact amount for a single dose (400/100mg in 5ml), for single use. The solution is formulated on an alcoholic basis and there is an interaction with the polyurethane nasogastric tube because the polyurethane absorbs alcohol causing the catheter to swell and deteriorate, which is why, other services were notified to use polyvinyl chloride catheters or silicone. Likewise, the syringes used to repackage the solution were exclusive for oral administration used in pediatrics, with the aim of reducing medication administration errors, since it is not possible to connect parenteral injection needles with them. These measures were intended to make the dispensing system as efficient as possible, as once the drug entered a unit with patients with a positive test, it was contaminated, therefore it could not be reused. Additionally, the fact that the hospital is located on an island made it even more difficult to acquire the medicine, given the supply problems nationwide, the great restriction of air and maritime traffic and loan limitations from other hospitals.
The measures adopted managed to ensure the availability of lopinavir/ritonavir solution in all admitted patients, optimizing the scarce availability of a solution medication whose presentation is formulated in multidose containers. By adding the use of syringes for exclusive oral use, administration errors were prevented.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Pauline Barreau, Joséphine Courouble, Pierre Pilven, David Vandecapelle, Thibault Stala, Geoffrey Strobbe, Guillaume Marliot, Frédéric Feutry
Two prescription assistance software are using in the hospital: DXCare®, for global drug management, and Chimio®, specific to the prescription and preparation of injectable chemotherapies. Clinical pharmacists (DXCare®) and pharmacists in charge of preparation (Chimio®) carry out the pharmaceutical analysis independently and they may not detect potential pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics drugs interactions or pathophysiological contraindications, slowing down the pharmaceutical analysis. Pharmaclass® can improve that by crossing all data flows between DXCare® and Chimio® and alerting the pharmacist. The objective were to select and code priority alerts and evaluate the detectability of drugs interactions and pathophysiological contraindications by the software Pharmaclass®.
Pharmaclass® is a software based on rules created by the pharmacist, from pharmaceutical algorithms. This rules engine crosses in real time all data flows of several software and sends alerts that must be analyzed by a pharmacist. It was applied in oncology for injectable chemotherapies.
An interface was set up between DXCare®/Chimio® and Pharmaclass® to allow the creation of requests. An analysis of drug consumptions and drugs at risk of interactions helped to select seven molecules (Methotrexate, Bevacizumab, Fluorouracil, Ifosfamide, Irinotecan, Cisplatin, Pemetrexed). A study of the summaries of the product characteristics and the drug interaction thesaurus and a bibliography was conducted and the rules were coded. These were checked by creating test patients with false prescriptions.
Eleven rules were created and, after some tests and coding readjustments, all was detected. Nine rules are about drugs interactions: three contraindications (Methotrexate/Trimethoprim, Methotrexate/Acetylsalicylic acid, Bevacizumab/Naloxegol), three associations not recommended (Methotrexate/Amoxicillin, Methotrexate/Ciprofloxacin, Fluorouracil/Antivitamin K), one precaution of use (Ifosfamide/Aprepitant) and two other rules concern enzymatic induction and inhibition of the metabolism of Irinotecan. The last two rules link the glomerular filtration rate with Cisplatin and Pemetrexed.
Following these creations, Pharmaclass® has allowed to detect drug interactions and pathophysiological contraindications that were not previously detectable. Thereafter, objective will be to establish an organization for the management of alerts and evaluate the number and the relevance of these alerts. New rules will be created for all injectable chemotherapies used in the hospital. Other center of Unicancer will be able to use these rules.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Gregorio Romero Candel, Paula Ruiz Belda, Carmen Caballero Requejo, Maria Jesus Sanchez Cuenca, Jose Marco del Rio, Juilan Castillo Sanchez, Luna Carratala Herrera
Some drugs dispensed in the outpatient office present interactions with food, leading to changes in their bioavailability. These changes which can result in a decrease in therapeutic activity or an increase in adverse effects, when dealing with narrow therapeutic margin drugs, may lead to alterations in their efficacy and/or toxicity. Developing the quick and accessible consultation table, we improved the quality and effectiveness of the treatment.
Preparation of the drug and food interaction guide for outpatient consultations.
The technical specifications of all drugs that are dispensed in the hospital outpatient office were consulted, and the possible interactions with food of every one of them were analysed by consulting the following electronic databases: Technical sheet, Bot Plus, Micromedex, Pubmed, UpToDate and Online Medicine Information Centre of the AEMPS. A database was developed with drugs that presented some type of restriction with meals, designing a quick reference table for outpatient consultation.
One-hundred specialities were reviewed, of which 22 were to be taken without food, 43 with food and 35 could be taken with or without food. The information given to the patient was quick and efficient, improving the effectiveness and safety of the treatment.
Our goal is to continue developing tools that allow us to provide quality information to the patient, improving the effectiveness and safety of treatments.
