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.
The Early Career Network aims to empower early-career pharmacists by sharing opportunities, insights, and success stories from across 25 member countries.
Together, we’re building a stronger, more connected hospital pharmacy community: one story, one country, one pharmacist at a time.
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.
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
Catarina Diogo, Rui Caceiro, Maria Helena Duarte, Armando Alcobia
The core objective of healthcare institutions is to ensure patient safety and maintain the highest quality of care throughout every medical procedure.
This principle must extend to the drug circuit as well. Within our hospital, pharmaceutical services have a dedicated route for producing injectable ophthalmic medications, serving 795 patients and yielding 3720 solutions, in 2022. However, the existing paper-based procedure for medication management is laborious, time consuming and error-prone, demanding full-time constant pharmacist involvement to ensure the secure progression of these medications.
A software application was developed on the Power Apps platform to streamline medication management for injectable ophthalmic medications. This application aimed to replace manual paper-based procedures with digital solutions, enhancing efficiency, reducing errors, and providing a comprehensive platform for patient registration, prescription tracking, schedule management, and oversight of injectable solutions’ production.
Over two months, needs of pharmaceutical and ophthalmology services were assessed, soliciting input from pharmacists, ophthalmologists, nurses and administrative personnel. Subsequently, a software application was developed featuring four distinct interfaces, customised for each professional group involved. This application enables patient registration, medical prescription, schedule management and monitoring the injectable solutions’ production – prescription and agenda validation, batch management and generation of identification labels.
This project is presented, therefore, as a customised digital solution, the result of a multidisciplinary collaboration.
It is the authors’ belief that this software has allowed for the development of a safer, more efficient, and integrated workflow, as an alternative to paper – which is more prone to errors. In this manner, from a pharmaceutical perspective, it simplifies the workflow, freeing the pharmacist to focus on other important tasks and optimizing personnel management. Furthermore, it is also valuable for ophthalmologists, enabling prescription repetition and access to patient history, as well as for administrative staff, streamlining schedule management. In conclusion, this software is set to transform our injectable ophthalmic medication circuit.
Further studies confirming its advantages are needed. Its validation would establish its potential and applicability across healthcare settings.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Andrea Bor, Nóra Gyimesi, Eszter Erika Nagy
Intervention-oriented classification systems are helpful tools to document the CPIs in a structured manner. Our aim was to develop a clinical pharmacy platform in the e-documentation system at our institution. This CPI data enables healthcare providers to track medication history, and to systematically analyse the effectiveness and the pharmacoeconomic benefits.
A pilot survey was conducted on the traumatology wards to analyse and describe our clinical pharmacist interventions (CPI) based on severity and clinical relevance.
Three clinical pharmacists collected data on the changes of drug therapy at two 31-bed traumatology wards during pre- and postoperative period. We adopted the CPI classification system to our daily practices. This is challenging since the narrow time frame between patient admission and discharge often limits the opportunity to provide clinical pharmacy services. Raw data was previously screened and classified into 5 categories, drug related problems (DRP), clinical pharmacist intervention (CPI), significance (S), outcome (O) and acceptance (A).
We have established a data collection process, which allows us to record CPIs in our daily clinical environment in an efficient manner.
The most significant DRPs were incorrect dosage regimen (n=47), untreated indication (n=28), contraindication (n=25), excessive dose (n=19), subtherapeutic dose (n=17), drug interaction (n=15), no indication (n=11), experiencing adverse drug reaction (n=8), failure of drug administration due to shortages (n=5).
CPIs were divided into four groups:
1. Pharmacokinetic cause (dose adjustment, changes of drug dosage regimen, drug discontinuation, drug switch, etc.)
2. Pharmacodynamic cause (adding new drug, drug switch, – discontinuation, etc.),
3. Providing drug information (patient education, new drug, changes of administration route, etc.) and
4. Miscellaneous.
Significance were categorised as major (e.g. oral anticoagulant – LMWH switch, postoperative opioid use), moderate (e.g. loop diuretics – ion supplementation), minor.
Outcomes were therapeutic success, prevention of potential harm (e.g. adverse drug reaction) or cost saving.
73% of the interventions were accepted, the rest were rejected for the first time, but nearly half of them were admitted after minor modifications.
This CPI platform should be shared in the national digital health system.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Dorian Protzenko, Vincent Hoang, Guillaume Hache
We unveiled during an audit that, in the past 2 years, 19% of our hospital DAOCs prescriptions were underdosed: due to the population profile (old, frail), the conventional bleeding risk scores were consistently high and, as such, not informative. To avoid a hypothetical bleeding risk, physicians were randomly underdosing patients beyond guidelines, without any evidence regarding the efficacy.
Using machine learning, we unveiled that underdosing direct oral anticoagulants [DAOCs] to prevent bleeding risk in an old and frail population had no significant impact on drug-related hospitalization [DRH] nor death, and cannot be supported. To help targeting patients for whom extra care would be more beneficial rather than underdosed DAOCs, we built a predictive model of bleeding events and provided risk factors among our population.
We performed a retrospective study, based on data collected during the audit, of patients treated between October 2020 and April 2022 with Apixaban or Rivaroxaban for atrial fibrillation [AF]. Demographic and clinical criterias (i.e., GFR, polypathology, co-medications, prescribed DAOC, respecting dosage and scheduling) were collected. The occurrence of specific outcomes (i.e., bleeding and thrombosis that led to medical care and drug seizure, DRH and death) were retrieved from the patients’ medical records. Machine learning explorations were performed using RStudio®.
119 patients were included. We modeled using logistic regression the impact on selected outcomes of underdosing DAOCs. We found out that underdosed DAOCs were associated with a lower bleeding risk (OR=0.30, CI95%[0.07;0.95]), a higher thrombosis risk (OR=6.67, CI95%[1.23;50.0]), but without any impact on DRH nor death. Unsupervised algorithms unveiled that DAOC choice (Rivaroxaban: OR=2.80, CI95%[1.15;7.13]), sex (Male: OR=0.44, IC95%[0.16;1.12]) and using dosages from guidelines (OR=3.32, CI95% [1.05;14.80]) were predominant explanatory variables regarding bleeding risk. The choice of DAOC was the only covariate that impacted DRH (Rivaroxaban: OR=2.78, CI95%[1.22;6.56]). Finally, using a gradient-boosting algorithm, bleeding risk was predicted with a 0.73 roc-auc, superior to conventional models.
Therapeutic education of patients and caregivers, telephone follow-up or pharmaceutical consultations will be implanted for patients at high bleeding risk. An audit will be performed next year to measure underdosed prescriptions rate, and improve the model with new data.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Charlotte Arp Sørensen, Karin Aagot Møller Jørgensen, Anne Lund Sørensen, Rune Dalsenni Rask
Clinical Pharmacy pharmaconomists perform a wide range of tasks at the hospital for example, medicine service with medication ordering, placement and checking of expiry dates. A sustainability project in 2020 highlighted manual and time consuming workflows, for example, manual reading, interpretation and notation of expiry dates in paper forms, when medicine rooms are reviewed for medicine that expires within the next half year. The dream of an easily accessible digital solution arose to make workflows more flexible, modern and sustainable.
A smartphone application for managing expiry dates in medicine rooms and reduction of medicine wastage was applied.
With the application, the smartphone camera can be used to scan the data-matrix of medicine packages and get a sorted overview of medicine and its expiry dates. In the application you can register a medicine package as either used, discarded or released. By releasing medicine packages, the medicine is made available to colleagues in other medicine rooms at the hospital.
A smartphone application was developed in close and synergistic collaboration between software engineers, pharmaconomists and pharmacists. The smartphone application was initially tested in small scale, and then adjusted and implemented among pharmaconomists and pharmacists to be used in up to 129 medicine rooms at the hospital from January 2022.
The application creates value for the Hospital Pharmacy, the Hospital and the society because:
– It takes significantly less time to check and scan expiry dates
– We avoid misinterpretation of expiry dates; and
– By releasing medicines to be used in other medicine rooms, the application makes it easier for us to work sustainably. In nine months, 1700 packages with a total cost of
€121.000 has been moved between medicine rooms in an attempt to avoid medicine wastage.
At the hospital we have a mutual medicine budget. Therefore, it makes good sense to move medicine between medicine rooms to get the most health for the money.
Implementation of the smartphone application among pharmaconomists in other hospitals within the same region is considered. Also other hospital pharmacies in the country have shown their interest. In addition, a similar application for utensils is under development.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Zora Ćetković, Dragana Rajinac, Ivana Baralić , Jelena Marković, Darija Kuruc Poje, Miroslav Kota, Špela Urh, Irina Tegelj, Vesna Bizjak, Dragana Mitrić, Tijana Kovačević, Andrej Pečet, Irena Radivojša, Sanja Filkova, Vesna Bašić-Milošević
Medication errors regarding reconstitution and administration of parenteral antibiotics are frequent in hospitals. In our study conducted in 12 Southeastern European hospitals in 2021, we demonstrated the need of parenteral antibiotic reconstitution/dilution database in hospital pharmacy practice. Moreover, according to European Statements of Hospital Pharmacy (statement 5.5.), implementation of electronic decision support system by HPs should help to decrease the risk of medication errors. The purpose of software tools is to gather all relevant information regarding parenteral antibiotic reconstitution/dilution and make them easily accessible.
A group of hospital pharmacists (HPs) from 6 Southeastern European countries created new software tools (a mobile-responsive website and mobile applications for Android and iOS) for providing information on reconstitution and administration of parenteral antibiotics in collaboration with software developer. These tools contain parenteral antibiotic reconstitution/dilution database in seven different languages (English, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Bosnian, Macedonian and Montenegrin).
Technical requirements for website and mobile applications were designed by HPs. The development of these software tools was carried out by a software developer and funded by European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP). The final version of the software went through a rigorous evaluation, conducted by HPs during development and all technical problems were resolved consequently.
· Designing and developing these software tools helps HPs to provide evidence-based information about parenteral antibiotic reconstitution/dilution at the point of care, thus improving decision-making process and patient safety. · Reconstitution of parenteral antibiotics in wards is efficient and smooth. · Oral and written instructions for parenteral antibiotic reconstitution/dilution are replaced by electronic decision support tools, designed to prevent medication errors. · HP’s interventions are required to support the use of these software tools.
Our next challenge is wider use of these software tools in order to ensure the appropriate reconstitution/dilution of parenteral antibiotics in wards by nurses and physicians. These software tools are applicable in hospital setting and can be used by all regional hospitals. Additionally, they can be easily incorporated in hospital information system. We also plan to update periodically antibiotic reconstitution/dilution database, as new information becomes available.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Juan Campillo, Manuel Bonete, Marta Zayas, Maria Molina, Laura Barrajón, Cristina Martínez, Ángela Rizo, Maria Ángeles Bernabeu, Maria Teresa Aznar
Medication errors (ME) occur in different phases of the drug circuit: prescription (16%), transcription (27%), validation, preparation, dispensing (48%) and administration (9%). The AEP is a tool to guarantee the safety of this circuit, being able to avoid up to 65% of ME. There is also a learning curve in new users of an AEP, confirming the need for support to reduce ME.
1-Maintenance of the Assisted Electronic Prescription Program (AEP)
2-Implementation in 11 wards and in the Emergency Department of a 396-bed tertiary hospital
3-Training
4-To set a pilot AEP
5-Reeducation strategies
1- 1465 drugs included in the Pharmacotherapeutic Guide were configured. 3 levels of danger were created for Hazardous Drugs (HD) and the recommendations for their preparation / administration were agreed upon. The Therapeutic Exchange Guide was integrated into 443 drugs (761 exchange proposals).
2- It started in the Emergency Department and every week a new ward with AEP was opened.Paper was eliminated throughout the circuit, drug dispensing trolleys were modified and a computer was fitted to record administrations at the bedside.114 pharmacotherapeutic protocols were created.
3- A technical training program, changes in procedures, schedules and training documents were designed. 72 sessions were given to 346 physicians and 88 sessions to 543 nurses.
4- 490 incidents were reported, prioritizing the most urgent (compromising patient safety). 224 claims to expedite resolutions. We also collaborated with other hospitals.
5- Welcome plan to train new staff and annual sessions. A tutorial video to focus on the points that caused the most errors was recorded. Preparation of new documents to report the changes.
First hospital to implement computerized administration. Elimination of transcription errors. Improved administration security. Greater visibility of the pharmacist and participation in decision-making. Contribution to development of the AEP and its implementation in 15 more hospitals.
Monitoring the necessary interventions to develop educational strategies when a growing trend is observed. Improve the welcome plan. Continue piloting the new AEP versions Follow the evolution of pending incidents. Evaluate the impact of the educational strategy of the tutorial video.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Sonja Guntschnig
The aim of this good practice initiative (GPI) was to identify local resistance patterns, improve prescribing quality, reduce hospital costs, calculate antibiotic use data, track problem organisms, infection clusters and enable transfer chains tracing.
With the introduction of a new antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) group into Tauernklinikum, Zell am See, a new informatics tool called HyBase® by epiNet AG was implemented to establish an interface linking microbiological results, consumption of antimicrobials, the hospital infections surveillance system “Krankenhaus-Infektions-Surveillance-System”(KISS) and the hospitals antimicrobial resistance data. AMS teams need suitable AMS surveillance systems to track intervention changes and measure results.
After purchasing release by the hospital management, HyBase needed an interface with several IT system providers, namely the internal microbiology laboratory (KISS software), System Application and Product in processing (SAP), and two external microbiology laboratories.
Antibiotic consumption figures were obtained retrospectively by calculating defined daily doses (DDD). This also gave insight into problematic use of certain antibiotics and indicated potential for antibiotic restriction.
Antimicrobial resistance patterns were displayed, which led to the introduction of infection control and AMS measures. Alert organism surveillance data was obtained and evaluated for different wards.
Learning from this implementation will enable changes in antimicrobial prescribing which will lead to improvements, both in healthcare quality and patient safety as well as a potential reduction in prescribing costs. Alert organism clusters will be detectable as will be transfer chains in the healthcare setting. It will also allow for the introduction of infection control agent stewardship for example by testing hand disinfection compliance or recording the spread of surface adherent organisms.
This GPI addresses the WHO antimicrobial resistance global action plan and local antimicrobial medicines concerns. It may prove useful for other healthcare settings and can be easily implemented to obtain data necessary for robust effective antimicrobial stewardship.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Cristina González Pérez, Laura Llorente Sanz, Ángel Liras Medina, Ana Andrea García Sacristán, María Molinero Muñoz, Lidia Ybañez García, José Alberto Peña Pedrosa, Henar González Luengo, María Luaces Méndez, José Manuel Martínez Sesmero
Telepharmacy implementation in the context of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic conducted us through the management of a high volume of complex, real-time both clinical and economic data. A multidisciplinary working group (biomedical engineers from the Innovation Unit, clinicians, managers and hospital pharmacists) developed a software tool in April-May 2021.
The design of an agile, customizable and dynamic dashboard for the visualization and analysis of Telepharmacy key performance indicators (KPI) through Business Intelligence (BI).
Phases:
1. Situation analysis. KPI definition. Ethics committee approval submission.
2. Extraction and processing of raw databases (Telepharmacy database, outpatient dispensing program, hospital admission database, drug catalog) through data mining.
3. Co-creation of the comprehensive dashboard in PowerBI®, by integrating database sources. Different panels have been designed where filters such as age, time frame, medical service, pathology, etc. can be applied.
• Description of general variables: patients, demography, shipments, time frame, medical department.
• Geolocation of the destinations of the patients’ home delivery.
• Pharmacological profile: top 10 drugs, distribution by active ingredient and drug classification group.
• Relative analysis of the beneficiary patients of Telepharmacy vs global outpatients
4. Pilot project by different types of users (administrative staff, clinicians and managers)
5. Structure design for automatic updating of the panels from the successive updates of the source databases
The quality of the raw databases can be a limitation. It has been necessary to define how to handle missing and duplicate data. Pre-processing, normalization and transformation data processes have been applied too.
Working within the hospital network ensures that there are no security gaps in terms of patient data protection.
For the external use of the dashboard, the granularity of the data is modulated to ensure enough clustering to avoid the identification of individual patients.
Processing the huge dataset (more than 2.4 million records) was possible by BI tools that synthesizes data, provides dynamic and engaging visualization (charts and graphs), allows the interactive reports customization for more effective communication of results and apply analysis based on Artificial Intelligence.
Applying new technologies will help us improve strategic decisions: interactions, behaviors and trends perceiving, weak points identifying, uncertainty reducing and over time monitoring.
Selection, Procurement and Distribution
Mª Ángeles Parro Martín, Beatriz Montero Llorente, Teresa Gramage Caro, Manuel Vélez Díaz-Pallarés, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Sagrado, Hilario Martínez Barros, Ana María Álvarez Díaz
To ensure continuity of treatment and pharmacotherapeutic follow-up in patients vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection included in a home delivery and telepharmacy program.
Implementation and adaptation of home delivery and telepharmacy during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A work procedure was designed to detail the new functions to be performed by administrative assistants (AA), pharmacy technicians (PT) and pharmacists (PH). A first procedure was designed, which was adapted and improved after 6 months of experience, giving rise to procedure 2.
Procedure 1
– AA phone call to patients scheduled to obtain consent for home delivery and confirm delivery data.
– The PH grouped patients who had confirmed home delivery in the appointment manager.
– The PH reviewed the electronic prescription of all patients and performed telepharmacy to those who were due and/or had incidents.
– The PT prepared the packages.
Procedure 2
Phase 1
– The AA called all patients scheduled until the end of the year to offer them the option of remaining in the home delivery and telepharmacy program permanently. If they accepted, their consent and delivery data were recorded. From this point on, the call to offer home delivery and telepharmacy was discontinued; it was only offered to patients when they attended in person.
– A specific diary for home delivery patients was created.
– The telepharmacytelepharmacy was added to the PH diary.
Phase 2
– Trained PT in home delivery incident resolution (address changes, absent patients, package rejection) to reduce FAR’s working hours.
Phase 3
– Development of a computer application: computerization of manual processes (labels, identification of refrigerated shipments, SMS delivery confirmation sent to patients, and request for appointment changes).
31,066 home delivery have been performed on 7,170 different patients. 7,443 telepharmacy consultations have been performed.
PT training and computer development has reduced the PH dedication from 7 hours to 3 hours.
Establish criteria for prioritization of patients who are candidates for home delivery and telepharmacy.
Implementation of video call instead of telepharmacy
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Joana Russo, Maria João Ribeiro, Humberto Gonçalves, Joana Ribeiro, Silva Cristina, António Gouveia
In our country the oncology medication for ambulatory patients is dispensed by the hospital pharmacist (HP). Due to several aspects (i.e., COVID-19 pandemic) the process of distribution of said medication has changed in that the HP and the patient no longer meet face to face (Drive-thru systems, proximity projects in which the medication is sent to a nearby pharmacy of the patients living area). A tool was required that enabled the HPs to continue to monitor the relevant clinical aspects (patient education; medication adherence (MA), drug interactions (DI) and adverse events (AE) evaluation).
We used a mobile application (App) to conduct the pharmaceutical evaluation of clinical aspects that need to be considered when dispensing oncology medication.
In collaboration with the Information Technologies department of our hospital, an App was developed. It integrates the patient’s hospital prescriptions and their answers to an adaptive query that identifies cases that need further clinical data We selected a specific drug (ibrutinib) and developed an algorithm that presented the extended questions accordingly. The App was announced to patients that required hospital medication and wanted to receive it through an alternative method of distribution.
In little over a year, a total of 1720 requests were received (668 patients). The algorithm was successful in differentiating patients whose evaluation needed to include additional clinical information. In 22 requests, further data was automatically gathered (9 patients) enabling us to evaluate MA, DI and AE. These teleconsultations do not require additional professionals (ie an assistant to register the request) nor a compatible time slot for a pharmacist-patient phone call.
The results showed that the concept of pharmaceutical teleconsultations through an App is viable and we intend to extend its range to other drugs and to dissociate the teleconsultation from the dispensing request. This approached also showed that proximity between HP and patients was positively affected allowing patients to consult their hospital pharmacist whenever they need to and wherever the patient was.
