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.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Connor Thompson, Alison Orr
Surgical patients are at risk of medication-related adverse events, with some of these patients having co-morbidities requiring long-term medications prior to surgery. Published data suggests pharmacist interventions can reduce adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and medication errors and reduce hospital length of stay.
The effect of implementing a pharmacist into the HpB surgical ward round (WR) was unknown, this would also support ongoing service development projects in liver pharmacy on patient pathways.
This study aimed to establish the range and clinical impact of interventions made by the specialist pharmacist when attending HpB post-surgical WR as part of ongoing pharmacy engagement and service development.
A prospective study looking at interventions of a specialist pharmacist on WR over a one-month period, attending two WR per week. Review of all post-surgical HpB on an inpatient ward. All interventions collated and categorised based on commonality.
Over the course of data collection, the pharmacist reviewed 140 patients and made 477 interventions as part of the WR. This included 45 history medications being started, identification of 32 ADRs to current treatment, 16 instances of vancomycin dose adjustments, confirmation of anticoagulation for 17 patients and addition of 101 antibiotic stop dates contributing to better antimicrobial stewardship. There were also 70 instances of a nurse/doctor/patient requiring additional information on medication treatments.
This has highlighted the scale of interventions a pharmacist can make on a WR. Emphasising not only adjustment of medications but also the need for medication related information by healthcare professionals and patients alike.
Moving forward a pharmacist will attend at least two WR per week, with potential scope for support in pre-assessment and post-operative clinics to review weaning of analgesia and long-term management of pancreatic replacement for example.
With the recent announcement regarding new standards for the initial education and training of pharmacists in the UK, it would be valuable to assess the impact of a prescribing pharmacist on these WR.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Elodie Delavoipière, Laura Fazilleau, Carine Lehoussel, Isabelle Goyer, François-Xavier Roth, Julien Mourdie, Agnès Bobay-Madic, Simon Rodier, Bernard Guillois, Albane Cherel
360° virtual room of errors is an innovative educational tool which can be included in strategies of ME risk management. NICUs are high-risk areas and consequently, a priority target. Therefore, we developed and evaluated a virtual reality-training program based on medication error management in the NICU of a university hospital centre.
A virtual reality-training course was developed and evaluated, regarding prevention and management of medication errors (ME) in NICUs.
A multidisciplinary working group was set up (2 pharmacists, 2 neonatologists, 1 pharmacy resident and 3 NICU nurses) to define: the target audience, the training model, the assessment methods (pre-training and post-training evaluations), training days and educational materials.
The program was intended for professionals involved in the medication circuit in the NICU: physicians, residents, and nurses. Weekly sessions have been scheduled in order to train 99 professionals. Every session was run by 3 professionals (physician, nurse and pharmacist) and lasted two hours and a half. The session was divided into 5 stages: 1/pre-training evaluation, 2/briefing, 3/360° digital simulation allowing ME detection, 4/debriefing, 5/ post-training evaluation. Although, it was a digital-training, a pedagogical formula with “classroom” training sessions has been chosen in order to promote interactivity between learners and trainers particularly during the debriefing. This virtual reality-training course was assessed by Kirkpatrick’s four levels of training evaluation model: satisfaction questionnaires, knowledge evaluation and skills self-assessment, audits of practices, monitoring of indicators (adverse event reports). Assessments were done before each session, immediately after and within 3 months of the session, to both evaluate and enhance educational impact.
This concept promotes the link between clinicians from the NICU and the multi-disciplinary approach concerning the risk management of ME. By directly involving all the healthcare professionals, this innovative training provides a patient-safety culture development and the implementation of safety measures. The implementation of this training concept in a multi-centric assessment of professional practices should enable to confirm pedagogical interest of such innovative sessions and his deployment in other health facilities.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Božena Bürmen
In University Medical Centre Ljubljana (UMCL) a HAM list was created in 2008 and has not been significantly changed since then. Our aim was to develop a systematic strategy to review the list by including local data.
We comprehensively updated the hospital list of high-alert medications (HAM) and identified hospital specific medications not yet present on HAM lists. We joined international HAM data supported by medication error (ME) reports and expert opinion with data from the hospital ME reporting system.
We analysed 390 MEs submitted to the UMCL ME reporting system from 2016 to 2018. We compared the HAM list from Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) and the UMCL HAM list. The criteria such as frequency of the reported ME, severity of harm for the patient, affected population, novelty, etc, were used to identify potential HAM. Furthermore, we calculated the probability of the ME report for the individual medications from the reported MEs and the hospital medication consumption data. The calculation was done for the medications involved in 3 or more reported MEs (Tyynismaa et al, 2017) and for the medications involved in MEs which caused harm to the patient.
The joined results from the comparison of HAM lists and reported MEs showed that several other medications could be added to the UMCL HAM list, e.g. individualised parenteral nutrition for the paediatric population, oral sedation agents for children, dialysis solutions, lidocaine IV, methadone, bupivacaine, and nusinersen. The probability-based HAM identifying method supported our previous suggestions to extend the UMCL HAM list. Additionally, the method unexpectedly revealed medications with a high probability of ME and/or harm for the patients, that are not included in any HAM list (ISMP, UMCL), such as romiplostim, parenteral iron preparations, ampicillin with sulbactam, and others.
In future we plan to develop a paediatric specific HAM list based on the same strategy; i.e. considering international suggestions and analysing paediatric ME reports in UMCL.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Alice Oborne, Mark Kinirons, Virginia Aguado, Steve Wanklyn, Laura Watson, Jaymi Mistry, Duncan McRobbie, Abhiti Gulati, Emma Ritchie, David Wood, Niall Stewart-Kelcher, Adrian Hopper, Patricia Snell, Tony West
Medicines are common interventions but have inherent dangers: 9% inpatient prescriptions contain errors, and medication errors occur at an estimated rate of one per patient per day [1-3]. Medication incident reporting was low, with high proportions of harmful incidents.
Senior and junior staff collaborated to systematically improve safe medication processes and outcomes in a 1200-bedded multi-site hospital. The work aimed to reduce harm from medicines and improve medication safety culture.
Pharmacists, doctors, nurses and governance staff set up a Medication Safety Forum which met monthly to focus on high risk drugs, processes and patients. Published literature and international guidance were reviewed [1-3]. Twelve subgroups worked on safer opioid, insulin, anticoagulant, allergy and injectable medicine use and paediatric, elderly, critical care and peri-operative care. Subgroups published guidelines on the hospital intranet. External aviation and patient safety experts reviewed processes. Medication incident data were reported to staff monthly from June 2008. A monthly medication safety newsletter (total 68), screensaver messages, podcasts, mouse-mats, ‘safety days’, audit, training and senior staff promoted best practice. Electronic prescribing and medication administration (EPMA) with decision support was introduced in 2015.
The Medication Safety Forum met monthly 2009−2019. Medication incident reporting increased from 60 to over 400 per month (total 31330 over 11 years), whilst harmful incidents all reduced (Figure). Incidents with harm reduced from 51 to 24 in the first to last 20 months. Dose omissions reduced by 10% despite an increase in patient acuity, anticoagulant use and insulin use. The most common incident type was wrong dose, agreeing with national incident data. New guidelines included 30 for insulin, 28 anticoagulation and 19 opioid use. Medication incident reporting increased from 10th to highest in similar hospitals [3].
Multidisciplinary leadership, multimedia guidance, technology, audit and feedback in medication safety can be applied in any healthcare setting to enhance patient safety. Further system enhancements are planned.
References:
[1]National Patient Safety Agency 2004. Seven steps to patient safety
[2]Prescribing report, 2010. www.rcpLondon.ac.uk
[3]NHS Improvement organisational data reports
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Marijana Fortuna, Petra Tavčar, Jure Dolenc, Monika Sonc
To support us in understanding our role in the preparation of chemotherapy products. To prevent the risk of harm to patients. Recognise prescribed error in pre-documented chemotherapy protocols
Cytostatics are carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic drugs. Handling requires a number of organisational and technical systems. All products should be safely and accurately prepared with special care to ensure the highest possible product quality, correct dose, the right patient, the right medicine, the right carrier solutions and right administration, without microbiological and particle contamination. The prescription and preparation of cytostatic drugs must be closely monitored. The most important factor in achieving this is the constant training of pharmacists in pharmaceutical techniques.
This year started with monthly reviews and training in the following subjects by using a written algorithm. Risk to product: Drugs reconstitution negative pressure isolators, leakage/damage or defects of vials, particles, transport and storage. Risk to patient: Incorrect calculations, microbiological contamination, incorrect administration, extravasation, incorrect administration route, incorrect labelling. Risk to operators: Contamination, toxicity, equipment, gloves, cleaning, occupational exposure. All checks have been made throughout the whole of preparation process, adhering to standard operating procedures (SOP-s).
We concluded that continuing education by using a writhen algorithm is useful practice. It helps prevent automatic work, remind us to check each step in process and know how to recognise errors in chemotherapy prescriptions and preparation. In 25 cases of prescribed chemotherapy, intervention of a pharmacist was required. In 5 cases of chemotherapy preparation, pharmaceutical techniques have detected a discrepancy in the prescribed therapy.
Regardless of experience at work, it is necessary to constantly repeat how to work properly, and awareness why we are doing this.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Bernie Love, Tracy McFadden, Patrick Martin, Val Connolly, Deirdre Brennan, Michelle Griffin, Danielle Bracken, Siobhan Maguire, James Carr
Avoidable harm caused by medication is one of the most commonly reported adverse events in healthcare settings.
Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown launched a formal Medication Safety Programme in November 2017 by appointing a Medication Safety Facilitator and establishing a multidisciplinary Medication Safety Committee to promote and support the safe use of medications. The Medication Safety Committee undertook a number of activities to establish the programme in the hospital.
-An evidence-based literature review to define and guide the scope, breadth and direction of the programme. -A baseline in-depth analysis of locally reported medication incidents (2016/2017) on the National Incident Management System (NIMS) was conducted to identify initial targets for improvement. Analysis was undertaken using NCC-MERP, a recognised and validated tool used specifically for medication incidents. -An annual work-plan, incorporating necessary elements of a medication safety programme, was devised by the committee defining goals for the year.
Safety Culture: • Prominent commitment from hospital management to medication safety. • Investigations into medication errors aligned to a just and fair systems approach. • Promotion and encouragement of medication safety reporting and learning with a Medication Safety Awareness Day. • Implementation of the ‘Know, Check, Ask’ campaign to enhance medication safety by empowering patients. Governance: • Organogram updated to reflect reporting relationship of new committee. • Medication Safety made standing item at Quality & Safety Executive meetings. • Annual report submitted to Hospital Executive Committee Measurement & Monitoring of medication incidents: • Quarterly report produced and disseminated to front-line staff tracking and trending medication incidents including narratives. • Performance indicators established for: -No. of incidents reported (2018 reporting increased by 32% over 2017); -Reporter of incidents; -Category of harm; -Stage of medication use process where incidents have occurred. Education & Training: • Regular face-to-face education sessions arranged with front-line staff. • Quarterly medication safety bulletin devised and disseminated, informed by audit findings and incident reports. • The successful Medication Safety Minute initiative from St James’s Hospital was adopted and implemented, with content informed by local incidents. Development, Updating and Dissemination of PPPGs. • New IV drug administration guides (n=53) developed and updated. • Introduction of one-page ‘Medicines Information Sheet’ as quick reference guides for key topics. • DOAC prescription and administration guide developed and circulated. Audit: • Audit programme established informed by incident analysis, complaints and best-practice including introduction of an ‘audit window’ to gather hospital-wide data. Quality Improvement: • Informed by incident analysis, best-practice and audit findings, a number of moderate-high leverage quality improvement projects were initiated including removal of concentrated potassium from general clinical areas, introduction of an insulin & glucose monitoring record and introduction of an automated dispensing cabinet for out-of-hours access to medication.
The structural aspects established for the Medication Safety Programme have been successful in establishing a programme in the hospital and are reproducible by other centres.
Work continues in Connolly Hospital to identify themes of incidents, audit of practice and implementation of quality improvement initiatives.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Mohammed Almeziny, Maha Aljuhanei , Fahad Alkharji
Smart infusion pumps have been introduced to prevent medication errors and they have been widely adopted by healthcare. They incorporate safeguards such as soft and hard dosage limits.
A smart pump was implemented in a tertiary hospital.
A task group was formulated from all involved parties to cover all issues related to practice, and it involved nursing and pharmacy staff to overcome all obstacles that may face the project; in addition the information technology (IT) department was involved to determine the facilitation of all technical issues. At the beginning the group faced two main barriers: creating the initial drug library which was a significant amount of work for the pharmacy, then uploading the drug library. In addition, all these works were to be carried out manually by the medical engineering. The quantitative data available from the smart pump software were used to improve drug library use. The team started to collect feedback from and communicate feedback to direct care nurses about drug library usage via e-mail, staff meetings, a “whatsapp” group and one-on-one conversations. This included asking nurses why the drug library was not being used regularly. The most frequent responses included “The pump is hard to use,” “The list doesn’t have the medications I need and, “It’s just easier to use the rate-based programming feature”.
The pump library usage percentage for total infusions was raised from a baseline of 2.85% to 30.97% in the first week. After careful review by the nursing, pharmacy, and medical leadership, some changes to the library were made. These included standardising drug concentrations in the pump library and providing ongoing staff education as well as implementing the best practices cited in the ISMP’s guidelines for the use of smart pumps; and running daily usage and weekly soft limit override reports from the pump library. Furthermore, a new category, “feeding”, was added to pump library; finally all medications and plain fluids were added to the pump library.
A Bar-Code Medication Administration System is needed (BCMA), to ensure the right patient gets the correct drug, dose and route at the right time.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Iván Maray Mateos, Miguel Alaguero Calero, Adrián Rodriguez Ferreras, Cristina Calzón Blanco, Cristina Álvarez Asteinza, Lucía Velasco Roces, Ana Lozano Blazquez
Intravenous drugs in the paediatric population bring up additional issues than the usual in adults. In their prescription, not only does the dose have to be adapted to the patient’s weight, the volume in which the drug is diluted must also be adapted to the reduced fluids requirement without jeopardising the stability of the mixture. In view of these facts, IV drug prescription in paediatrics implies a higher risk of medication errors. This new prescribing system simplifies prescription and reduces risks.
Development of an assisted prescription system of intravenous mixtures adapted to paediatric patients in which both the drug dose and the diluent volume are automatically calculated according to the patient’s weight.
A literature review of drug dosing in paediatrics and their stability in different diluents was performed. For every drug the following parameters were considered: maximum dose in children (mg/kg), maximum concentration allowed (mg/ml), common doses and volumes in adults. Using these values, a system was built which calculated drug dose and diluent volume according to the patient’s weight and the maximum concentration allowed for stability reasons. For safety and to ease the preparation, the diluent volume in millilitres was rounded up to the next 10. In order to avoid overdosing overweight or older paediatric patients, maximum dose and diluent volume were narrowed down to the usual quantities in adults. Ultimately, this system was integrated in the electronic prescription system. A protocol was created, named “drug name” IV mixture PEDIATRICS. So, by selecting this protocol in a specific patient, the target dose and the diluent volume are automatically calculated.
This system was implemented for 38 drugs. From July 2018 to April 2019, 910 IV mixtures have been prescribed from the following Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) groups: A02 Drugs for acid related disorders (39), J01 Antibacterials for systemic use (287), J02 Antimycotics for systemic use (3), J05 Antivirals for systemic use (8), A04 Antiemetics and antinauseants (175), N02 Analgesics (395), N03 Antiepileptics (3).
This method could be implemented in other electronic prescription programmes. The system must be updated by the Pharmacy Department, introducing new drugs and constantly reviewing stability databases, posology regimens, and information regarding dilution of parenteral drugs.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Thewodros Leka, iun Grayston, Mashal Kamran, Biljana Markovic
The Carter report recommended that about 80% of hospital pharmacist time should be spent on the wards to provide clinical pharmacy services. However, in our hospital’s surgical specialty at the time of this report, it was found that only 33% of pharmacist’s time was spent on clinical pharmacy services. This had a negative impact on:
• rate of medication errors and near misses
• supply of critical medicines
• pharmacist participation in productive ward rounds
• timely discharge of patients home
The Pharmacy department made a successful business case to the Hospital executives to open a Satellite pharmacy to serve 4 surgical wards. The proposal was to recruit a dedicated clinical pharmacist and Medicines Management Technician, and set-up a dispensing satellite pharmacy.
The business case indicated that if funded, the new satellite pharmacy team would: • improve clinical pharmacy key performance indicators • improve patient safety • deliver a potential cost benefit Funding limitation was an obstacle and we have to convince the board.
We achieved 60−90% improvement in the objectives set in the business case as illustrated in Table 1 and 2. The pharmacy team won the annual quality improvement award of 2018. Table 1: Clinical Pharmacy Service improvement Clinical pharmacy services Service rate pre-satellite pharmacy Service rate post satellite pharmacy % of service improvement Medication errors 16/month 6/month 63% Pharmacist interventions 20/month 80/month 75% Pharmacist participation in ward round 6/month 50/month 88% Time to dispense discharge summaries 90 minutes/discharge summary 20 minutes/discharge summary 77% Number of patients counselled 15/month 75/month 80% Pharmacist available in the ward 1.5 hrs/day 7.5 hrs/day 80% Time taken to supply critical medicines 1 hour 5 minutes 91% Table 2: Potential Cost-benefit savings achieved Activities Cost-benefit savings/year (€) Reducing length of stay of patients €17,000 Reducing repeat dispensing €16,000 Effective use of nursing time €11,000 Reducing prescribing errors €103,000 Total Savings €147,000.
• Weekend working.
• Service improvements can be transferred to acute medical units and downstream medical wards. Reference Carter report.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Gregorio Romero Candel, Paula Ruiz Belda, Maria del Carmen Caballero Requejo, Maria Jesus Sanchez Cuenca, Jose Marco del Rio , Julian Castillo Sanchez, Luna Carratala Herrera
In common clinical practice, the stability of medications is an area of interest to obtain maximum security and efficiency. After reconstitution and dilution, knowing the validity period is very important for the effectiveness and safety of the treatment, since it must be administered to the patient under the appropriate conditions. In recent years, a large number of high-impact cytostatic medicines with limited stability data have been registered and incorporated into clinical practice. Frequently, the stability data results are contradictory or insufficient. The main goal is to make a reliable quick guide of reference with the validity periods of the reconstituted and diluted active principles according to physicochemical stability, therefore increasing safety, reducing queries for these doubts and improving the management of unused remains that have high economic impact.
A cytostatic stability guide after reconstitution and dilution has been made. The active principles and commercial presentations that are used in the intravenous mixtures area were reviewed.
The obtaining of the physical-chemical stability data has been done by reviewing the information available in Stabilis, Pubmed, Lexicomp and technical data sheets.
Fifty-four pharmaceutical specialities from 44 active principles, all in the cytostatic group, were checked. Tables of reference for the elaboration sites were made for consultation. It has reduced the number of consultations conducted and improved the time of preparation of these products. The rest of the elaborations for other administrations have been taken advantage of, making a better use of the pharmacotherapeutic resources.
The next step is to keep developing consultation tools that improve the safety and management of hospital drugs.
