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.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Betânia Abreu Faria, Sara Barroso, Antonieta Silva, Olga Martins
Portuguese legislation “The Basic Health Law (No. 95/2019) and the National Plan for Patient Safety 2021-2026 (NPPS 2021-2026) and the goals of the World Health Organization (WHO) are fundamental pillars of healthcare safety. The NPPS has promoted patient safety in the Portuguese National Health Service, focusing on specific issues such as safety culture, unambiguous identification of patients, safe surgery, pressure ulcer prevention, prevention of falls, infections associated with healthcare and incident reporting and drug safety. Thus, it is essential to ensure the training of health professionals (HP) in the field of patient safety and the safe and rational use of medicines. The objectives of the training actions focused on the safe use of medication, promoting patient safety and sharing experiences between the various HP, in order to optimise the circuits and procedures already implemented.
Multidisciplinary training actions were carried out within the scope of safe medicine practices.
A team of four pharmacists and one nurse carried out training actions in the context of Safe Medicines Practices. The following topics were addressed: medicine circuit; good practices in drug preparation; identification of medicines: Look-Alike Sound-Alike (LASA) and High-Alert Drugs; physicochemical incompatibilities; factors that modify stability after reconstitution/dilution; fractionation and crushing of Solid Oral Pharmaceutical Forms (SOPF); drug information sources; reporting adverse drug reactions and other incidents; good practices in medication administration.
Training actions were carried out with a total of 29 hours of training and 357 participants. Suggestions for improvement were presented: optimisation of drug signage, compliance with established circuits, logistical aspects, on time drug information, improvement of communication channels, increase in the frequency of training actions. The trainees expressed receptiveness and interest in this initiative, which provided content that was little discussed and very relevant to their daily practice.
The correct preparation and administration of medicines is essential to safeguard their effectiveness and patient safety, which is the ultimate goal of every health professional’s daily activity. The Pharmacist, as part of the multidisciplinary team, must promote strategies that safeguard Safe Practices throughout the drug circuit. Hence it is important to ensure the continuity of these trainings.
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.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
CHIARA CARCIERI, SILVIA SCALPELLO, MARISA FIORDELISI, MARIA CARMEN AZZOLINA, ANNALISA GASCO
Errors in drug therapy affect the entire drug management process. The literature show that 56% of patients are at risk of having medications discrepancies and errors at transitions of care. Ineffective communication between healthcare professionals and patients/care-giver or interprofessional, can generate patient intake errors, sub-adherence and therapeutic failures. This harms are avoidable and the aim of this work was to minimise errors and optimise medicines use by different strategy, as recomands by the World Health Organization (WHO) in The Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021–2030.
At the Mauriziano Hospital a multilevel system has been developed to prevent, early identify, resolve and monitor the problems that, in different steps of patients path, can generate risks related to therapy at transitions of care.
Different tools has been developed and implemented in the patients clinical path in order to assurance risk management for patients in transition of care:
1. Hospital pharmacist consulting has been activated to support physician in for in patients medical reconciliation;
2. Therapeutic reconnaissance and reconciliation electronic card (SRR-T) has been developed and integrated in the dicharge letter;
3. Classification of the hospital pharmacists interventions in the transition of care to avoid medical errors was created as risk management tool.
4. Telepharmacy service to monitor patients follow-up at distance was activated.
5. Educational paths have been implemented to improve patient medication literacy throught professional counselling by pharmacists in discharges.
Medication safety tools implemented have improved communication between healthcare professionals (intra and inter-hospital) and between healthcare professionals and patients. The patient-centred approach allows to focus on key points in the medication process to correct intake therapy and minimized correlated risks. Physician was supported by pharmacists and facilitated in the correct management of prescriptins. In 4 months the pharmacists carried out 470 corrective interventions of which 31 with possible clinical impact for the patient. Appropriate process put in place allow to minimize expenditure of supplementary health resources by National Healthcare Service.
In the future it will be useful to develop specific pathways for polytherapy patients and invest in automation of processes such as drug logistics.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Paula Hernando Martínez, María Antonia Meroño Saura, Caridad Marti Gil, Lidia Martínez Valdevieso, Jaime Fernández-Bravo Rodrigo, Dolores Barreda Hernández
There is a wide bibliography on how human errors related to drugs put the patient’s health at risk. Drug preparation and administration errors, dose calculation errors, lack of knowledge about drugs or interactions, to name but a few. There must be protocols to ensure that drugs are safe for patients, including procedures which professionals should fulfill in order to reduce those errors in processes and guarantee, in such cases, that they will not have adverse effects on patients.
Development of infographics for assembling drugs which are susceptible to a higher rate of errors in their preparation and administration to hospitalized patients.
During September 2021, a working group was formed in the pharmacy department (PD). Through the nominal group technique, the design and content of drug infographics was proposed as a solution to the raised problem. Subsequently, a bibliographic research of susceptible drugs to human errors during administration or preparation and those which requiring special handling was reviewed through the list of high-alert medication from National Institute for the Safe Use of Medications website and NIOSH list of hazardous drugs. To this end, the PD databases were analysed, obtaining the drugs that required the greatest number of pharmacotherapeutic consultations made by nursing staff on drug administration and recommendations made during pharmaceutical validation.
An infographic model has been designed which includes the description of the drug (name of drug, excipients, dose, pharmaceutical form, dosage regimen, route of administration, concentration), the preparation and administration protocol (reconstitution, dilution, infusion rate, premedication), observations (maximum doses, conditioning, incompatibilities, alerts) and storage conditions (conservation and stability). Infographics on dantrolene, intravenous phenytoin solution, intravenous nimodipine solution and potassium chloride solutions are currently being distributed. These documents are available at the nursing controls and on the hospital’s internal website.
To increase the availability of drug’s infographics and to update those that have already been developed when necessary. In addition, from the PD, the preparation of administration kits for the solicited drugs is proposed so as to ensure that all the necessary materials for the preparation and administration are included along with the corresponding drug and infographic.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Carmen Ortí Juan, Cristina Toro Blanch, Maria Àngels Gispert Ametller, Ana Perez Plasencia, Cristina Lecha Ochoa, Anna Dordà Benito, Rosa Sacrest Güell
Prescribing errors (PE) are an important cause of medication-related adverse events in the Emergency Departments (ED) but limited data are available in ED with electronic prescribing and administration (ePA) systems. Knowing the frequency and types of PE can help healthcare professionals to prevent and reduce the risk of them occurring.
To determine the rate of PE in the ED, to classify incident types and to identify critical points where measures should be implemented to improve patient safety.
Prospective, observational and cross-sectional study in an ED with ePA system during 6 working days (May-June 2021). The inclusion criteria were patients stayed more than 8 hours in the ED and all patients awaiting hospitalization. Prescriptions were analyzed by a multidisciplinary team made up of two pharmacists, an emergency physician and the person in charge of the hospital’s medication errors committee. PE were reported to the hospital’s patient safety-related incident notification system.
Of the 65 prescriptions revised during the study period, PE were reported in 84 cases and 15 situations with the capacity to cause errors were detected. The average age of patients was 67 ± (SD=17,9) years and each prescription had an average of 8.4 medications. The rate of PE was 1.52 errors per patient, being higher in less severe patients than monitored patients (1.09 vs 2.0 PE per patient, respectively). The most common types of EP were omission of the usual medication (60.7%), wrong dose (15.5%), wrong frequency (7.1%) and drug is not indicated (7.1%). No adverse reactions related to EP were detected. According to the Spanish consensus about Medication Reconciliation in Emergency Units, 47.1% of omissions of usual medication were drugs that should be reconciled during the first 4 hours in the ED. The results of the study and the importance of medication reconciliation are highlighted in a session in the ED.
The PE rate in the ED was 1.52 per patient and the main type was omission of the usual medication. A cross sectional study will be made in the future and compared to the current one to establish the impact of the implemented measures on the PE rate.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Pilar Fernández-Villacañas Fernández, Manuel Ríos Saorín, Patricia Ortiz Fernández, Alba María Martínez Soto, Consolación Pastor Mondéjar, Carmen Caballero Requejo, Lorena Rentero Redondo, Alberto Quesada Asencio, Elena Urbieta Sanz
Due to kidney pathologies affect the normal pharmacokinetics of many drugs, it is necessary to adjust the dose of the drug for each patient. It is also necessary to ensure effectiveness and safety for the hospitalized patients with renal failure, associated with higher morbidity and mortality. The main objective is to minimise validation and prescription errors.
A review of drug dosing according to the patient´s creatinine clearance was performed. This dose adjustment was included as alerts in the electronic prescription system.
For each drug, the data of the dosage adjustment in patients with renal impairment were compiled by consulting the technical data sheets and the national guidelines. In the case of antimicrobials, the information was obtained from the Antimicrobial Therapy Guide 31th Edition March 2021. The data were organized in an Excel table to later integrate them into the hospital’s electronic prescription system.
The dose adjustment was made for 848 presentations of different drugs: antibacterials (186), antipsychotics and antidepressants (109), antiepileptics (63), opiates (57), antivirals (49), NSAIDs (26), diuretics (24), anticoagulants (22), antimycotics (21), antidiabetics (15), antiparasitics (11), antiemetics (11), antitumors (4), among others. A large number of drugs are highly dependent on kidney function, especially antibacterials, antipsychotics and antidepressants, making that an incorrect dosage of renal drugs can worsen kidney function and produce toxic effects due to their accumulation.
This dosage adjustment for patients with renal failure should be periodically reviewed by the hospital’s pharmacy service in order to keep the alerts of the electronic prescription system up-to-date. Additionally, this system can be implemented for other pathologies such as liver failure, or to avoid overdose by establishing the maximum dose limit allowed. In conclusion, the importance of an adequate electronic prescription program that facilitates daily clinical practice is established, preventing possible medication errors.
Production and Compounding
Alessandro D’Arpino, Fiorenza Enrico, Caterina Donati, Simone Leoni, Giorgia Longobardo, Marco Bellero, Alessandra Bianco, Giuseppe Zacchi, Anna Zaltieri, Stefano Monica, Nicolò Squartini, Matteo Federici
In most of Italian healthcare organizations, the large majority of non-cytotoxic IV medications are prepared in clinical environment by nursing staff. This is recognized as a complex and labour-intensive process that entails various risks of potential medication errors (microbial contamination, wrong reconstitution/dosing). Centralizing the preparation from the clinical environment to the pharmacy in order to provide ready-to-administer IV medications represents a strategy to improve safety and prevent medication errors.
The community of APOTECA technology users is committed to fostering co-de¬sign of technology based on the hospitals’ needs and sharing best practices for improving hospital pharmacy services. During a meeting taken place in September 2021, a panel of hospital pharmacists belonging to APOTECA community laid the groundwork for centralized preparation of non-cytotoxic intravenous (IV) drugs and establishment of Central Intravenous Additive Service (CIVAS) in Italian hospital pharmacies.
The following methodology was adopted to promote a standard profile of centralization: (1) definition of criteria for the selection of drugs suitable for centralized preparation, (2) identification of IV medication classes for which preparation should be centralized due to intrinsic risks and demand, (3) evaluation of potential benefits, (4) discussion on organizational challenges regarding the establishment of CIVAS, (5) assessment of the role of automated preparation with robotics.
Five selection criteria to centralize drugs were mentioned: long-term stability data, frequency of use, cost, complexity of preparation, microbial contamination risk. Continuous infusion of antibiotics, vasoactive drugs, anaesthetics, pain medications, intravitreal injections, and patient-individual doses for paediatric patients were chosen as eligible IV medication classes to implement centralized preparation. Major benefits of centralization were pointed out, i.e. proper aseptic preparation, perspective quality controls, process traceability, reduced drug wastage, and releasing nursing time to care. Logistics, inventory management, limited space, and inadequate quality control units were identified as main challenges to the CIVAS establishment. Participants agreed that robotics plays an important role to minimize repetitive manual activities, optimize working efficiency, and increase pharmacy production capacity, thereby streamlining the introduction of CIVAS.
A close collaboration between healthcare staff and hospital pharmacy will be essential to evaluate the feasibility of centralized preparation as well as its clinical and cost-effectiveness.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Eline Coene , Catharina Olsen, Mathijs Swaak, Freya Vaeyens , Frederik Hes , Stephane Steurbaut, Sonia Van Dooren , Pieter-Jan Cortoos
Pharmacogenomics has a large potential to optimize individual patients’ both current and future drug therapies. In Belgian hospitals however, pharmacogenomics is still rarely used in clinical practice posing great opportunities for hospital pharmacies to explore this field and setting up new services.
The Centre for Medical Genetics (CMG) of UZ Brussel, a 721-bed tertiary hospital in Brussels (Belgium), has been performing next-generation sequencing of mendeliomes for diagnostic purposes since 2016. Pharmacogenomic data is thus potentially available, but currently not further used. As hospital pharmacists, we wanted to explore the possibility of reporting pharmacogenomic information as ‘secondary findings’, in particular prevalence of actionable pharmacogenes and gene-drug interactions (GDIs) in our own population, and to determine required features and opportunities of a future pharmacogenomics project
Firstly, 14 pharmacogenes comprising 626 loci were selected based on available guidelines, clinical relevance and whether the gene was included in the mendeliome gene set. With the support of CMG, we then reviewed available data for patients with a mendeliome analysis between 01/03/2016 and 30/06/2020. To enable haplotype assignment, a Python script was developed displaying possible haplotypes with corresponding ‘matching score’ and ‘completeness score’. Where possible, phasing was done using pedigree information. Resulting phenotypes were finally further linked with medication histories, abstracted from patients’ electronic medical records in order to identify possible GDIs.
Pharmacogenomic data could be re-used for 536 individual patients, revealing that at least 76.9% had one or more actionable phenotype while 60 GDIs with varying relevance were found. CYP2C9 had the most actionable phenotypes (174/536) and was involved in 42 GDIs. However, not all phenotypes (e.g. copy-number variants) were detectable for CYP2C19 and CYP2D6 due to limitations of current mendeliome data and used platform.
Reusing genomic data has great potential and can be an ideal stepping-stone towards developing and implementing pharmacogenomics in other hospital pharmacies but requires a good interplay between pharmacists, geneticists and bio-informaticians. In our hospital this initiative has led to in-depth collaboration between pharmacy and medical genetics department focusing on validation and implementation of a pharmacogenomics-array coupled with implementation of a pharmacogenomics service, next to pharmacological use of whole-genome sequencing data.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Our proposed system comes from the idea of a large clean room with pressure regimes, and airlock, hoods and other ancillary equipment, Which we made from it a very small clean room that is our box, when there will be no need for us as operators to get into it, or very simply take only those parts that are supposed to be sterile, and only those parts that are the two ends of the infusion bag and the end of the medicine vial
“Closed” and airtight system for preparation (reconstitution, measurement, dilution) and injection of IV drugs at the patient’s bedside, in the various clinics and further home treatment, Disposable system, All its parts come in one piece without the need for threading, or assembly and disassembly
Estimated dimensions: 10 cm length, 5 cm width and 3.5 cm depth or similar, its shape can be rectangular or any shape convenient for use operation storage and destruction at the end of the process
Intended for a wide range of types of drugs – such as intravenous antibiotics, cytotoxic drugs, biological drugs, etc.
Designed according to its different variations for different types of vials and different amounts of drugs that come as a dry powder for dissolution, and are also suitable for drugs that come in the dissolved liquid form.
It is also intended for use with glass ampoules and there is a wide range of drugs that still come in glass ampoules
Intended for administration of drugs that do not need to be diluted in an infusion bag given in IV PUSH
We designed the device with 3D software (solid wark). It consists of a number of functional parts,
The sterile closed system comprises an airtight enclosure, which is shaped so as to define an enclosure interior; and an infusion-bag receptacle. An infusion-bag seal is configured, when in a sealing state, to make an airtight seal with respective external surfaces of a medication port and an IV tubing port of a bottom region of the infusion bag, when the medication port and an IV tubing port are inserted into the infusion-bag receptacle.
The proposed solution and its advantage
– A single-use system built in one piece, without the need for assemblies, disassembles, etc.
It will be possible to perform the entire process in one place, such as at the patient’s bedside or in the clinic, starting with the powdered drug dissolving process, mixing a measured dose, mixing it in an infusion bag and injecting it into the patient’s vein safely and accurately.
Maintains the perfect process under sterile conditions without fear of contamination of the injected drug
– Preparation in a system that is safe for the immediate environment and safe for the caregiver himself from contamination of drugs such as cytotoxic drugs, antibiotics and more
Savings in building very expensive infrastructure of clean rooms
Saving on very expensive disposables, such as closed system transfered deviced, robes and more
Save valuable work time dedicated team of pharmacists, nurses work time, work time transportation, storage places and more
Minimize the chance of errors in administering medications and confusion between different medications
Working with non-exposed needles reduces the chance of needle prick injury
Applied research will be carried out by pharmacists and nurses, in order to test the efficacy and safety of the device (by using a basic prototype), these experiments will use different IV administration drugs, we will test the method of dilution from a drug vials and glass ampoules, measure the exact dose and transfer to the infusion bag, and remove through the IV line, the accuracy of the preparation, the sterility of the preparation, the quality in terms of leakage or drip, comfort, safety and more are measured.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Monira Alwhaibi
This study is the first project of the STOP ME projects which aims to develop a tool that can assess the application of the essential strategies that can stop or minimize MEs in healthcare institutes in Saudi Arabia. Consequently, stakeholders in the healthcare system can identify current gaps that need feature improvement to enhance patient safety
Medication Errors (ME) are defined as unintentional drug-induced harm that led to morbidity and mortality. The STOP (ME) project is a comprehensive series of research studies that aim to explore MEs in Saudi Arabia and how to stop such harmful events.
Extensive search of the literature review for the essential strategies to stop or minimize MEs was carried by the research team to develop a draft of the aimed tool. The survey tool was sent in round 1 to the Delphi experts’ panel for review. Based on received recommendations, the tool was updated and sent for round 2 review and consensus. The developed tool was then piloted to test the practicability of the tool before running the survey on large sample size (second project). The study was approved by the King Saud University Medical Centre IRB ethics committee [20/0153/IRB].
After using the Delphi technique two major changes happened to the survey. 1) Section A was removed (high alert medications). 2) A new section was added (ISMP publications) with some minor changes. Launching a pilot survey on thirty healthcare practitioners (physicians n=11, pharmacists n=10, nurses n=9) resulted in further minor changes by adding two new columns. The final tool was a survey consists of six sections including Demographics, Prescription, Dispensing, Administration, Monitoring and Quality, and Targeted Medication Safety Best Practices for Hospitals. All combined 86 questions with the determined time to answer the survey is in the range of 25-30 minutes. Overall feedback of the pilot survey was good.
This initiative “STOP ME” will have a significant impact in the field of medication safety research and will build awareness among institutes in Saudi Arabia that are lacking important strategies that prevent MEs
