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.
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
To identify improvement opportunities in the Pharmacy Compounding Area through the analysis of indicators obtained from a traceability App.
In 2022, a mobile application (App) was designed and implemented to facilitate the traceability of preparations compounded in the Pharmacy (parenteral nutrition, chemotherapy and other individualized sterile preparations). In addition, the analysis of data registered in the App has provided valuable information about the compounding unit performance.
Monthly reports from May to December 2022 were analysed, focusing only on chemotherapy preparations. The indicators selected were: the average number of monthly preparations, weekly workload distribution, daytime distribution of compounded preparations, preparations returned to the Pharmacy, percentage of treatments prepared on the same day of administration, and percentage of preparations compounded after the scheduled administration time.
An average of 139 chemotherapy preparations per day was recorded. The daily distribution highlights that Thursdays and Fridays are the busiest days with the 45% of the total weekly preparations. Furthermore, the morning shift carries out most of the compounding work, with 79% of the preparations being compounded before 3 PM. This information might be useful to the management team to better distribute tasks and resources. Data analysis indicates that 62% of the preparations are compounded in advance, while the remaining 38% are prepared on the same day of administration, which is also valuable information to organize the compounding workflow. On average, 59 preparations were returned per month. Finally, we found that 8.1% of the chemotherapy drugs were prepared with a median delay of 47 minutes from the expected time of administration. All these items are currently being monitored as quality indicators in order to find the way to minimize them.
The analysis of data recorded in the App provides us valuable management indicators for organizing work in the preparation area.
Tracking these indicators serves as a quality tool for the area and helps us identify opportunities for improvement.
Education and Research
Pascaline Hubot , Elise Francq, Guy Stichelbaut
Hospital pharmacy is a constantly evolving field that requires ongoing training. New teaching strategies based on the gamification of educational objectives have been making headlines for several years. These include EG.
An educational escape game (EG) has been designed and implemented for hospital pharmacists and pharmaceutical-technical assistants (Apth) working in one of Chirec’s distribution departments (Belgium). The objectives were : to provide continuing education and to improve various cross-disciplinary skills such as communication, team cohesion and critical thinking.
After considering the various constraints (dedicated time per session, number of players, etc.), a non-linear scenario was constructed. Distribution-specific themes were chosen for the creation of 12 enigmas, some in paper format and others in virtual format using Genially platform (November 2022 version). To ensure that the training sessions ran smoothly, hint envelopes containing the updated procedures were provided. Finally, the EG was pilot tested to get an idea of the game’s timing, to identify and correct any practical problems, and to adapt certain enigmas deemed too complex if necessary.
Nine sessions were held between December 2022 and September 2023. Each session included : briefing (5’), EG session (45’), debriefing (10’) and the distribution of an anonymous satisfaction survey at the end of the session (2’). Pharmacists (n = 24) and Apth (n = 15) respectively agreed (37.5% (n = 9) ; 66.7% (n = 10)) and strongly agreed (54.2 % (n = 13) ; 20% (n = 3)) that the EG improved their knowledge, and all participants found the EG to be a good teaching tool. Feedback was also very positive on cross-functional skills such as communication, team cohesion and critical thinking.
Futures sessions will be planned for newcomers to the pharmacy. Given the popularity of this educational tool and the suggestions for new topics, a new EG theme will certainly be on the agenda for 2024 pharmacy continuing education.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Eva Gomez-Costa, Purificacion Cid-Silva, Juan Luis Hurtado-Bouza, Laura Caeiro-Martinez , Pablo Feijoo-Vilanova, Andrea Luaces-Rodriguez, Sandra Rotea-Salvo, Alejandro Martinez-Pradeda , Maria Isabel Martin-Herranz
The purpose is to identify deficiencies and improvement areas in the outpatient consultation area for evaluation and proposal of possible solutions.
Implementation of an user satisfaction evaluation system for outpatient consultations at the Pharmacy Service of a tertiary-level hospital and initial results assessment.
The system was put into operation in January 2023 through a QR code placed in each consultation room and in the waiting areas accessible to all patients. The survey allows for differentiation between the different pharmacy service centers in the hospital, patient-caregiver patient category, age group, and whether it was the first consultation or an appointment for treatment continuation. Users can rate aspects related to information, waiting time from the appointment time to receiving attention, the professionalism of the staff, respect for privacy, pharmaceutical information about the treatment, and the facilities. This rating can be classified into: very good, good, bad, very bad, except for the waiting time: reasonable or excessive. Final question is an overall assessment of the service from 0 to 10. Survey allows for comments or suggestions.
A total of 86 surveys were conducted between January and September 2023. The majority were from users of the pharmacy service in the main building of the university hospital complex (82.6%). 10.6% were from first-time appointment and were mainly patients who answered (67.4%). Age groups: 65 years (12.8%). Regarding the evaluation, the results were: information about appointments, 51.8% very good; waiting time from the appointment time to receiving attention, 59.3% reasonable; professionalism of the staff, 59.3% very good; respect for privacy, 59.3% very good; pharmaceutical information about the treatment, 51.2% very good. The evaluation of facilities where pharmaceutical care is provided to the patient were: 33.7% bad and 9.3% very bad. The average score for the overall assessment was 6.7 points.
The evaluation of the information obtained from the surveys will serve as a basis for implementing corrective measures and possible improvements. The progressive increase in the number of survey will facilitate the detection of new issues and allow us to track changes in user satisfaction over time.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Beatriz Somoza-Fernández, Vicente Escudero-Vilaplana, Cristina Ortega-Navarro, Ana de Lorenzo-Pinto, Ana Herranz-Alonso, María Sanjurjo-Sáez
HH units have experienced an extraordinary period of growth over the past few years and are already considered the preferred option of care model for most patients. However, its full potential is actually limited by some challenges both demanding and ripe with opportunities for pharmacy engagement, such as patient clinical complexity (usually elderly and chronic patients at greater risk of poor adherence and suffering from medication errors) and lack of medical staff physically available for monitoring patients’ evolution.
We developed and implemented a comprehensive pharmaceutical care programme in a home hospitalisation (HH) unit.
The project was conceived by a multidisciplinary team (physicians, pharmacists, and nurses) that conducted a literature review and developed a new home medication management standardised operating procedure. The team worked in the design of a HH pharmaceutical care guideline and the implementation of an e-health care tool for remote patient monitoring.
1. HH pharmaceutical care guideline: it included the directions for the following measures: (1) a comprehensive pharmaceutical assessment and medication reconciliation, (2) standardised recommendations for optimising acute and chronic treatments at home, (3) daily interviews with patients or caregivers to explain medication changes, and (4) follow-up calls 7 days after discharge in order to assess medication adherence.
2. HH monitoring app: this new tool ensures pharmacotherapeutic monitoring by setting medication schedules and intake notifications. The platform includes a patient recording for vital signs, side effects, medication intake, and health status (functional status and quality of life). The system enables online access for pharmacists and physicians in real-time and continuous two-way communication.
Since our programme is easily applicable to any HH unit, we are working on implementing it in other hospitals in our country, in order to overcome HH medication management complexity nationally. We aim to conduct a multicentre study to evaluate its external validity in terms of increasing medication errors detected and optimising hospital resources.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Afke van de Plas, Judith Baars-Timmermans, Hanneke Goossens, Ellen Frankfort
This initiative aimed to improve:
1. Personalized Healthcare and Patient Satisfaction: In the pursuit of strict regulatory compliance, pharmacy employees sometimes overlooked the pharmacy’s fundamental mission. With limited direct patient interactions, staff were often unaware of patients’ unique needs and preferences.
2. Employee Satisfaction: The program aimed to empower employees by reducing excessive regulations and allowing them to make decisions that aligned with the overarching mission, with the expectation that this would enhance their job satisfaction.
3. Enhancing Awareness of the Pharmacy’s Mission: By connecting all activities to the pharmacy’s core mission, the program attempts to improve personalized healthcare and patient and employee satisfaction.
Maastricht University Medical Centre’s hospital pharmacy introduced the “All Activities in Alignment with Underlying Aim” program.
The program’s implementation involved several key steps:
1. Defining the Underlying Aim and Key Principles: The program team identified the overarching aim as “Happy Patients and Employees” and established four key principles: “See the Person Behind the Patient,” “Focus on What Is Possible,” “Take the Lead Yourself,” and “From Rules to Self-Regulation.”
2. Employee Engagement: The new policy was presented and discussed in detail during a meeting with all employees.
3. Communication: Periodic newsletters and monthly team meetings were used to share illustrative examples and foster discussions about initiatives.
4. Evaluation: Customer and employee satisfaction were measured through surveys before and after program implementation.
The outcomes of the program were highly encouraging:
• The adoption of “Happy Patients and Employees” as the guiding aim resulted in numerous instances of personalized healthcare and enhanced collegiality.
• The four key principles empowered employees to align their actions with the program’s aim. The empowerment to decide in the patient’s interest increased from 58% to 73%.
• Surveys indicated improved customer and employee satisfaction.
• Enhanced awareness of the pharmacy’s mission (from 47% to 66%) led to stronger connections between activities and the overarching aim (from 73% to 85%).
The “All Activities in Alignment” program serves as a successful model for other hospital pharmacies seeking to elevate personalized healthcare, patient and employee satisfaction. Its simplicity and effectiveness make it a valuable initiative worth considering for broader implementation.
Education and Research
Marie Coenen, Stefanie Goris, Thomas De Rijdt, Isabel Spriet
These changes were necessitated by the increasing number of (complex) clinical trials conducted at UHL. This Belgian 1995-bed, tertiary care hospital constitutes an attractive setting for clinical trials and a coveted partner for sponsors, due to its specialisation in a wide range of medical fields to treat complex pathologies. Adopting the changing research field whilst ensuring the highest regulatory compliance was challenging.
Since 3 years, the clinical trial team of the University Hospitals Leuven (UHL) pharmacy has gone through several metamorphoses. These were realised by introducing an activity based costing (ABC) model enabling financing of staff expansion, extension of the infrastructure, and extensive digitalisation.
In 2016, an ABC-analysis was conducted by the Belgian Association of Hospital Pharmacists to determine the cost of various pharmacy activities within a clinical trial. In 2019, the outcome of the analysis was revised to concur the fast-growing clinical research field.
To affirm the need to apply these updated prices, a retrospective evaluation was performed in 2020 documenting the number of clinical trial protocols, pharmacy staffing and applied prices over the past 4 years.
Rapid growth of pharmacy research activities was shown by an increase in the total number of active clinical trial protocols from 964 in 2017 to 1256 in 2020. Until then, quantitative expansion was not followed by qualitative growth since staffing remained steady at 13 full-time equivalents (FTE) and the applied costs were outdated and not cost-effective. To enable this transition, an up-to-date pharmacy budget table was developed based on the latest ABC-analysis and, along with an estimate of future income, approved by the hospital board in 2020. This allowed the pharmacy research staff to be reinforced to 19 FTE and the infrastructure to be extended to integrate extra storage capacity and research dedicated clean rooms. Starting from 2021, the budget table was implemented into practice using computerised support enabling automated billing.
Future directions include further digitalisation by automating accountability and compounding and focusing on qualitative growth by advancing the role of clinical trial pharmacists into a specialised member of the hospital research development team and of the clinical pharmacy team.
Introductory Statements and Governance
Hilario Martinez-Barros, Maria Muñoz-Garcia, David Gonzalez-de-Olano, Silvia Sanchez-Cuellar, Enrique Blitz-Castro, Gonzalo De-los-Santos-Granados, Dario Antolin-Amerigo, Ana de-Andres-Martin, Patricia Fernandez-Martin, Elena Gemeno-lopez, Ana Maria Alvarez-Diaz
• To understand directly and holistically the patients’ vision of their illness, treatment, healthcare experience and how they impact their daily lives.
• To define the ideal SAU by identifying innovations and changes that satisfy patients’ needs.
ASfarMA is a hospital pharmacist-led project within a multidisciplinary Severe Asthma Unit (SAU) that aims to apply different innovative measures encompassing humanization to improve treatment related results and patient experiences.
Human-Centered Design (HCD) is an approach to problem-solving that aims to make systems usable and useful by focusing on the users and their needs.
A core group was constituted with at least one member from each of the specialities that are part of our SAU. Members of an HCD-team devised and contributed to organize the following activities:
A series of proposed measures that respond to patients and professionals’ reported needs were made. They were classified as either “transformative solutions” or “quick wins”:
– 7 transformative solutions, which provide holistic responses that require greater development, effort and resources, were identified. E.g. Two-way communication APP, onboarding kit, design of common spaces for SAU members, patient coordinator.
– 14 quick wins, which provide significant benefits but can be implemented with lesser effort and resources, were identified. E.g. Non-urgent consultation mailbox, pediatric-adult patient transition consultation, asthma-specific emergency department circuits, coordinated consultation agendas between severe asthma unit members, expert patient workshops.
This project, which has a qualitative nature and is based on the experiences of both patients and professionals, has allowed us to understand their needs and identify innovative solutions that will be applied progressively to our SAU and other hospitals.
Production and Compounding
Marta García-Queiruga, Begoña Feal-Cortizas, José María Gutiérrez-Urbón, Andrea Luaces-Rodríguez, Alejandro Martínez-Pradeda, Sandra Rotea-Salvo, Carla Fernandez-Oliveira, Víctor Giménez-Arufe, Luis Margusino-Framiñán, Isabel Martín-Herranz
Daptomycin is an intravenous antibiotic usually prepared in Hospital Pharmacy services. Normally it is dosed based on body weight, which requires each intravenous mixture to be prepared in an individual manner for each patient. This might lead to an increased assistance workload in elaboration areas, a higher number of errors in the preparation and high costs due to waste materials generated during preparation.
The aim of this study is to describe the preparation of intravenous daptomycin by dose banding, a system in which daptomycin doses are rounded up or down in order to standardize and protocolize the preparation of intravenous mixtures as much as possible.
In order to improve this situation, dose banding strategy was implemented in February 2019: the obtained final dose was rounded in such a way that only mixtures of 500, 700 and 850 mg were prepared (in agreement with Hospital Pharmacy and Infectious and Microbiology medical teams) , following this scheme:
PRESCRIBED DOSE PREPARED DOSE
< 400 mg Prescribed dose (individualized)
400–599 mg 500 mg
≥600–799 mg 700 mg
≥800 mg 850 mg
Previous year before starting dose banding strategy (2018), 5493 individualized doses of daptomycin were prepared for 437 patients in our Pharmacy service. Between June 2020 and June 2021, 2680, 2555 and 997 units of daptomycin 500, 700 and 850 mg, respectively, were prepared for 360 patients. Batches of standardized doses were prepared in advance and kept refrigerated (stability of 10 days in 100 ml of physiological saline) until dispensation. In addition, during the same period, 15 patients (4 from pediatrics) received 209 individualized doses (3.2% of the total doses) due to their low body weight.
This strategy might decrease the number of errors in preparation and reduce processing times, which is essential since early appropriate antibiotic treatment in severe infection has been associated with better outcomes. Dose banding model could be extrapolated to other drugs with good physical, medical and microbiological stability in dilution, which are frequently prescribed and when few dose bands can cover most of the prescriptions.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Cyril Magnan, Elise Betmont, Guillaume Saint Lorant, Hubert Benoist
Evaluate the economic impact of improvement actions taken since 2017 on TSPs management.
Cold chain is a major issue in the pharmaceutical industry as a growing number of its products are temperature-sensitive and also in hospitals. In 2017, 27 cold chain breaks were declared by care units (CU) within a French teaching hospital, resulting in a risk for patient care and a potential loss of 40,363 euros, of which 18,505 euros (45%) could be avoided. Following this first study, a set of measures have been implemented in our establishment in order to secure the cold chain.
Potential losses and avoided losses of TSPs have been analyzed continuously since 2017 according to the same methods in a teaching hospital with 1,600 beds. In case of a thermal excursion (ET), the pharmacy is, according to the institutional procedure, immediately warned by an electronic alarm day and night or by a call from the care service, making it possible to define the action required from the service concerning the methods of keeping TSPs.
Since 2017, a mobile isothermal enclosure has been implemented for the transport of TSPs during the day in the CU. Connected temperature-monitoring sensors have been installed on so-called “at-risk” refrigerators. The alarm reports to the pharmacy was instituted in order to intervene as quickly as possible. Part of the refrigerators has been renewed and awareness has been raised among all CUs for the good traceability of temperature readings, allowing a drop from 24% in 2018 to 65% of compliant traceability in 2019. Following these improvement actions, 53 ETs with a potential loss of 53,769 euros were declared in 2019, of which 39,753 euros of losses could be avoided. Currently, 74% of ET losses can be avoided compared to 43% in 2017.
This economic assessment of the potential losses and the avoided losses of PTs shows the positive impact of the various improvement measures taken since 2017 as well as education of the UDS to secure TSPs. A regional awareness was implemented thanks to a collaboration with the regional health agency in order to promote TSPs management in the hospitals.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
José Marco-del Río, María Luisa Ibarra-Mira, Gregorio Romero-Candel, Ana Ramirez-Córcoles, Ana Valladolid-Walsh, Francisco Tomás Pagán-Nuñez
Our main goal was to improve patient’s safety, because we noticed that many patients did not take actually all the drugs that were prescribed by the physicians, and other times there were drugs that the patients were taking because they had an active prescription, but they were not supposed to. Additionally, we aimed to improve the drug-related information that the patients take home.
A programme which includes every patient admitted into the Internal Medicine department. It consists of three steps: clarification of chronic medication that the patients are taking, we handle them and updated schedule of their drugs upon discharge and we check the coherence with the active prescriptions.
We interview the patients during the admission in order to clarify and update the chronic medication that they are taking. When a patient is about to be discharged, the nurses call us, so at this moment we talk to the physician to know what changes are going to be made on the medication. To coordinate with the physicians and nurses, we had two meetings in which we established the timing of the programme, so the patients don’t have to wait too long for us. When we know the changes that the physician is going to make, we update the medication schedule to handle it to the patients or their family, and we explain to them the changes and how they should manage the new drugs. If any discrepancy or medication-related problem is detected, we talk to the physician to solve it.
In the last four months, we performed 180 discharges and we solved together with the physicians 20 discrepancies. Patients are now receiving more comprehensive information about their treatment.
To continue with the programme and broaden it to the rest of our hospital departments. Also we are working on a way of uploading our pharmacy schedules to the electronic medical record of the patients, so they can be available for every healthcare worker, which would improve even more the transitions of care.
