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
PALOMA CRESPO-ROBLEDO, MARIA SEGURA BEDMAR, IRENE ESCRIBANO VALENCIANO, NURIA BLAZQUEZ-RAMOS, BEATRIZ MARTIN CRUZ, CARMEN MORIEL SANCHEZ
Patient safety is an essential component of quality care. It’s known that EDs are an element of risk for the onset of adverse events due to conditions related to patients’ comorbidity, communication problems, medication errors and working conditions like limited information about the patient, workload, interruptions, shifts, etc. It was detected that reconciliation of medication was not performed; neither validation of the medication prescribed and medications were stocked with no order and control.
A project was developed to increase patient safety in the Emergency Department (ED) based on the presence of a hospital pharmacist in the team.
First thing was to review and validate the medication prescribed in patients who were under observation, at the same time performing a reconciliation given their acute situation. This way a relationship between nurses, physicians, patients and pharmacist was established.
Then, electronic prescription software was integrated within the automated dispensing cabinet (ADC), eliminating potential errors choosing the right drug. Only when a pharmacist has checked the medication, the list appears in the display and can be taken out all at once. The main problem has been to agree the stocks and how nurses can return easily and operatively the medication in order to not accumulate it out of the ADC.
Pharmacists’ clinical figure is being disclosed in a country where Hospital Pharmacy is a central and close department. In 43 days, 428 patients got their prescription checked in the ED, 346 pharmaceutical interventions were made in 198 patients, a median (IQR) average of 1 (1,2) interventions per patient. The main reason for an intervention was the adequacy to pharmaceutical forms included in the Hospital(n=130), followed by reconciliation interventions(n=77). Category of errors detected were mostly B (NCC MERP), showing pharmacists can detect an error occurred but that did not reach the patient
Hospital pharmacists should show their clinical and logistic potential, fighting with other health professionals to increase safety and care in patients. ED is the entrance of patients into the health system and where more errors can be committed, the work of a pharmacist should start at ED to prevent errors and give support and be part of the team.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Tine Van Nieuwenhuyse, Sabrina De Winter, Isabel Spriet, Thomas De Rijdt
During the last decade, healthcare shifted in many ways towards a more patient-focused rather than a disease-focused approach. Hospital pharmacy services experienced a similar development. Traditional drug-oriented services expanded towards patient-oriented services by imbedding computerized clinical decision support (CCDS) in the prescribing process and implementing bedside clinical pharmacy services, both leading to improved efficacy and safety of medication use. However, due to limited resources, clinical pharmacy services are not implemented on a hospital-wide basis in Belgian hospitals.
To guarantee patient safety throughout the hospital, emphasizing patients at risk, we started in March 2016 with the development and implementation of central check of medication appropriateness.
Development and implementation of central check of medication appropriateness (COMA) in hospitalized patients in a 2000-bed academic hospital.
Based on a risk analysis, high risk prescriptions are checked by a hospital pharmacist for appropriateness. A daily check (0.5 FTE) of automatically generated queries is performed using standardized algorithms. The queries are a result of the screening of all new prescriptions in the electronic prescribing system of the last 24 hours. If an urgent intervention is necessary, in case of a serious adverse event, a phone call is carried out to the treating physician. In all other scenarios, interventions are performed via electronic warnings in the patient’s file.
– Development of 75 specific algorithms covering 5 pharmacotherapeutic areas of interest: drugs with restrictive indication, medication-related biochemical changes, evaluation of overruled interventions raised by CCDS, reimbursement of drugs, sequential therapy for bio-equivalent drugs.
– Education of 8 pharmacist involved in the COMA
– During a 6-month period, 19220 prescriptions were checked for which 8284 (43%) electronic warnings were sent and 224 (1%) phone calls were carried out. When analysed without automatic warnings for sequential therapy, 11751 prescriptions were checked for which 815 (7%) electronic warnings were sent and 224 (2%) phone calls were carried out.
For the future we obtain next goals:
• Evaluation of the current COMA, with emphasis on improving specificity
• Development of new algorithms , also expanding to other areas of interest
• Development of an easy access training tool for hospital pharmacist to perform COMA
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Sergio Plata-Paniagua, Alfredo Montero-Delgado, Jose Javier Arenas-Villafranca
Currently, with the extended use of social-networks (SN), information related to medication errors can be disseminated quickly and directly, and also provide interaction with professionals enhancing the information. This is very important to promote safety culture among health professionals to prevent medication errors.
Two hospital pharmacy specialists from two spanish hospitals created a project based on web 2.0 to broadcast information about medication errors and how to prevent them.
First step was to create a website in which we could post information related to medication errors. The main part of the website is the blog, where we develop all information that we consider interesting. The website also has other sections containing useful resources: photo gallery with examples of look/sound-alike drugs, infographics, educational information, information about the authors and a section where readers can share content with the authors.
Second step was to create accounts on SN to spread the information posted in the website and also for sharing original content. We chose Twitter and Facebook as ideal SN. Twitter allows sharing information quickly and concisely and also is used by a different groups of healthcare providers by allowing us a wide spread. On the other hand, Facebook allows us to reach to a different audience, especially patients.
-Currently we have more than 16.000 followers on Facebook, 5.500 on Twitter and the website receives more than 3.500 monthly visits.
-Because of the multiple warnings that we have carried out about Look-Alike/Sound-Alike drugs, some pharmaceutical companies have considered changing the packaging of their drugs.
-We have achieved more than 70.000 signatures on change.org website requesting Spanish healthcare authorities to develop guidelines for the proper packaging and labeling of drugs. Because of this initiative, the Spanish press became interested in this problem and our project and the problem of drug packaging was mentioned in multiple media.
Currently, we have included another pharmacist in our project in order to enhance the quality and periodicity of our publications. On the other hand, we are trying to work together with institutions dedicated to preventing medication errors to carry out joint projects in order to improve patient safety.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
.
.
.
.
.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Hospitals are facing strong economic constraints and increasing requirements in terms of quality and safety of care. To address these difficulties, a solution could be to reorganise processes and relocate resources through the use of industrial engineering Business Process Improvement approaches such as Lean.
An original Lean method for business process improvement was designed and tested in an acute general medicine department in order to improve the mediation management process.
A Lean method for the hospital setting was elaborated based on a triangulation between literature data, semi-structured interviews and a case study. This method, relies on 5 operational activities (Understand the process, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Implement) and 6 support activities (Establish top management support, understand the environment, Organize a project team, Manage change, Monitor and continuously improve). A multidisciplinary project team (nurses, head nurses, pharmacists, physicians, pharmacy technicians, nurse’s aide) was then formed to experiment this method in the acute general medicine ward.
This project allowed improving the efficiency and quality of the medication management process. Medication errors at admission and risk for medication errors during administration were reduced (46% vs 12%), non -value added activities during administration were eliminated (25 minutes/nurse/day saved), ward stock management was streamlined (double bin system) and medication delivery was secured. More than 80% of the stakeholders surveyed (45) considered that the changes made to the process improved their working conditions (no impact for the others) and all the participants to the project team were satisfied or very satisfied with the project. The team now meets once a month to continuously improve the process.
The top management of the hospital has decided to promote this method and is currently creating and training a specific improvement team to support other improvement projects in the hospital.
