EAHP represents over 29,000 hospital pharmacists across 36 member countries. EAHP represents and develops the hospital pharmacy profession within Europe in order to ensure the continuous improvement of care and outcomes for patients in the hospital setting. This is achieved through science, research, education, practice, as well as sharing best-practice and responsibility with other healthcare professionals.
The EAHP Board, elected for three-year terms, oversees the association’s activities. Comprising directors responsible for core functions, it meets regularly to implement strategic goals. Supported by EAHP staff, the Board controls finances, coordinates congress organization, and ensures compliance with statutes and codes of conduct.
The EAHP staff supports the Board in executing EAHP’s mission. The Staff assists in financial management, events organisations, policy activities and all EAHP projects. The EAHP staff works closely with EAHP’s members and ensures the effective communication all relevant stakeholders.
The first member countries were Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany and The Netherlands in 1972. EAHP has now 36 EAHP members and 2 Associate Members. EAHP is open to countries members of the Council of Europe and since 2022 to organisations representing the interests of hospital pharmacists from outside the Council of Europe (Associate Membership)
EAHP’s structure is also composed by different standing committes: EAHP Scientific Committee, EAHP Education Executive Committee and the EAHP CTF Steering Committee.
At EAHP, we are committed to transparency in our governance, ethical standards, and funding practices. This section provides open access to our foundational documents, including the EAHP Statutes, Code of Conduct, and Funding Sources. By sharing these resources, we aim to uphold accountability and foster trust with our members, partners, and the public.
Keep up with all EAHP’s events and webinars. Contact the team at info@eahp.eu should you have any questions about upcoming events or activities.
Here you can find all upcoming events organised by EAHP and by all its members and associate members. Do not hesitate to contact the events team at events@eahp.eu should you have any questions about the organisation of these events.
Hospital pharmacists conduct a critical role in the care of patients in hospitals. Learn more about what they do here and in all the pages under Hospital Pharmacy practice and Policy.
Self-Assessment
SILCC
Closed SIGs
EAHP brings together experts from many areas of hospital pharmacy practice providing and highlighting good local sustainable practices as that can be up-scaled and shared with other countries. The EAHP Working Group on Sustainability has the aim of reducing the environmental burden of the hospital pharmacy services.
The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP), and its 36 member country platforms are creating a Common Training Framework for the hospital pharmacy education in Europe. The goal of this project is to allow the free movement of hospital pharmacists within the European Union.
The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) and the European Society of Clinical Pharmacy (ESCP) have collaboratively developed the Oath to Society. The Oath to Society is all encompassing and acts as a contract for excellence in providing compassionate patient care, working as part of the healthcare team and advancing the pharmacy profession, and showcasing how clinical and hospital pharmacists work every day
A day created to highlight the importance and to celebrate the work done by hospital pharmacies. This day celebrates all hospital pharmacy teams.
Catch up with EAHP’s press releases
Find all EAHP relevant publication like the EAHP Surveys, annual reports and the history books.
The European Journal of Hospital Pharmacy (EJHP) is the only official journal of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) and is committed to advancing the science, practice and profession of hospital pharmacy. As the premier communication platform for hospital pharmacists worldwide, EJHP is a major source for continuing education as well as updates on advances in the practice and standard of pharmaceutical care for patients.
When EAHP and Hospital pharmacists appear in the news.
EAHP publishes a monthly EU monitor with updates about the latest EAHP initiatives and information relevant for the hospital pharmacy profession.
Sponsor Channel
The Sponsor Channel is designed to maximise visibility and engagement, allowing sponsors to connect with the hospital pharmacy community and partners in a dynamic and interactive environment. From product demonstrations to networking sessions, the Sponsor Channel offers a range of opportunities for sponsors to showcase their offerings and generate leads in the new EAHP Website.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Laura Doménech Moral, Raquel López Martínez, Maria Eugenia Palacio Lacambra, Emili Vallvé Alcon, Ángel Arévalo Bernabé, María Guerra González, Maria Queralt Gorgas Torner
At PS Vall d’Hebron, one of our strategic objectives is to enhance the patient safety culture internally and externally within PS.
Establishment of a core safety team within the Pharmacy Service (PS) with representatives from various areas and positions, along with established activities and indicators: the Safety Team.
By organising internal meetings of the Safety team to manage, lead, and plan activities related to medication safety. These activities include:
Advising on and/or managing medication safety incidents reported to the Patient Safety Incident Notification System of Catalonia (SNiSP) Vall d’Hebron.
Conducting biweekly “5 minutes of safety” meetings between pharmacy technicians and a member of the Safety team in the General, Maternal-Infant, Trauma, Outpatient, and Oncology-Haematology areas. In each meeting, the minutes from the previous one are reviewed to report on agreements and progress related to the topics discussed. Incidents reported to SNiSP related to medication dispensing and logistics are discussed, and there is an open discussion for technicians to share safety issues, questions, and medication-related incidents. These situations (reported incidents and those detected by technicians) are collectively analysed to propose prevention measures. Minutes of each meeting are documented and made available in a shared resource.
Weekly “safety pearls” presentations where sentinel medication incidents are presented, along with root cause analysis, by a representative of the Safety team. Situations that have led to medication incidents/errors in prescription and treatment validation are also discussed, along with proposed prevention measures by other PS members.
Conducting sessions related to safety during PS Sessions to present the actions taken by the safety core team and its collaboration with the Hospital’s Error Prevention Subcommittee.
More than 100 medication incidents reported to SNiSP have been managed.
Over 50 meetings with PS technicians, resulting in more than 45 improvement actions derived from notifications and detected issues, such as creating infographics for proper medication identification (everolimus, vitamin D), improving the urgent medication dispensing process without a prescription, or enhancing the management of “off-label” medications.
Around 20 safety pearls involving all pharmacists, leading to the creation of protocols, default guidelines, and updates to prescription and administration advice in the prescription programme.
Two annual patient safety-related sessions.
Continuing to enhance the safety culture through sessions and meetings involving various stakeholders, implementing an online medication error prevention course, and expanding the team.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Nadia El Hilali Masó, Elvira Ramió Montero, Gemma Baronet Jordana, Marina De temple Pla, Paula Montoliu Alcon, Maria Jaume Gaya, Núria Pi Sala, Joan Altimiras Ruiz, Montserrat Pons Busoms
The confusion between drug names represents a common cause of medication errors due to similarities between trade names and active ingredients or vice versa. Very new drugs coexisting with others that are very well known can easily induce errors in wards, unclear prescription may lead to misunderstanding of prescription.
Development and implementation of measures to improve patient’s safety from purchase to drug prescription and administration.When we switch to a new provider maybe forced by drug shortage, we perform a review to avoid medication errors in all dosage forms.If needed, we elaborated alerts (pharmalerts) and newsletters. We applied Tall Man letters (TML) method to manage look-alike and sound-alike drugs, and to reduce prescription errors we elaborated a “Best practices on drug prescription” validated by Commission of pharmacy.
We prepared a formulary online on the intranet where pharmacist introduces relevant drug information as composition (i.e, excipients, contents latex or not, etc.), dilution, stability, source of errors (name, brand name,etc) among others. We compare them with existing ones to take an action, if necessary, that will be spread to all professionals. To implement TML method we followed the ISMP recommendations. First, we selected 3 antibiotics: cefOTAXime, cefAZOLin, cefTRIAXone. We changed these names in the prescription program so that the differentiation is reflected when drugs are prescribed, dispensed and administered. The implementation was explained to pharmacy, nursery and medical staff.After a month, we evaluated its acceptance.
We reviewed 61 new products: 50 trademarks, 14 new drugs and 7 dosage forms. 70.48% of products, acquired temporally or permanently, were new trademarks; 19.71% new drugs and 9.81% new dosage forms. The review is a good tool for a safe use of drugs and improves communication between healthcare providers. To evaluate TML implementation 240 questionnaires were completed: Acceptance was 92.05% (nursery and medical staff). 91.17% thought that it is possible to make a mistake with look-alike or sound-alike drugs and 68.72% that TML is useful to minimise medication errors.
The huge acceptance of TML encourages us to select other drugs from ISMP list. We have 6 pairs of drugs. We are planning to extend its use to storage shelves on wards.
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.
