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.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Ana Helena Ulbrich, Amanda Fonseca, Catherine Isoppo, Henrique Dias
The motivation behind NoHarm stemmed from the time-consuming nature of the prescription review process, which required clinical pharmacists to assess not only drug interactions but also factors such as appropriateness, effectiveness, safety, adherence, and affordability of drug therapies. NoHarm was envisioned as a solution to systematize the workflow and provide cross-referencing of essential drug and inpatient information, thereby addressing these issues.
The NoHarm initiative was developed to address challenges faced by clinical pharmacy teams during the prescription review process in a hospital setting. This open-source intelligent system was introduced to enhance the medication review process. The initiative was executed in a 420-bed public hospital in Brazil over a 17-month period to evaluate its impact on prescription reviews.
The implementation of NoHarm involved integrating the system with the hospital’s electronic health records to collect and compute all inpatient data. NoHarm utilized a drug knowledge base and intelligent algorithms to identify and alert healthcare professionals about inpatient risks. The algorithms were designed to cross-reference patient laboratory results with drug thresholds, adjust for liver and renal function, analyze drug usage patterns at the hospital, and extract patient risk factors from clinical notes, including diseases, adverse events, symptoms, and biometric data.
The number of medications assessed increased dramatically from 17,000 to 2,643,957 within the 17-month period, all while maintaining the same team size. Improved prescription review rates, rising from 65% to 94%, demonstrate the effectiveness of the system. Furthermore, these improvements in prescription reviews resulted in better clinical pharmacy services and contributed to reducing medication errors and associated risks in patient care at the hospital.
NoHarm is an open-source solution and an example of good practice in healthcare due to its achievements in streamlining prescription reviews and enhancing patient safety. Its successful implementation led to increased efficiency, higher prescription review rates, and substantial cost savings, showing its potential as a model for other healthcare settings. Its prospective global applicability makes it a solution to address medication errors and elevate the standard of care in healthcare institutions worldwide.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
MARCELO DOMINGUEZ CANTERO, CARMEN MARIA DOMINGUEZ SANTANA, MARCELINO MORA CORTES, ESMERALDA RIOS SANCHEZ, JUAN MANUEL BORRERO RUBIO
Patients who withdraw medication from outpatient pharmacies in Spanish hospitals are provided with pharmaceutical care and pharmaceutical care stratification tools in specific outpatient pharmacy consultations. These patients are usually multi-pathological with multiple drug interactions, contraindications, and important adverse effects. Therefore, during the hospital admission of these outpatients, it was appropriate to provide continuous care from the hospital pharmacy. Before the implementation of the protocol, there was no specific and systematic follow-up of hospitalized outpatients.
Implementation of a protocol that provides pharmaceutical care to outpatients during hospitalization, ensuring continuity of care through the pharmacy service.
The main problem with the implementation was the real-time detection of hospitalized outpatients. The development of a software tool to facilitate the location of patients provided an impetus for the implementation of the project. The computer tool selected patients who met the inclusion criteria (hospitalized outpatients with medication withdrawal in the outpatient unit in the last two months). Patients treated with erythropoietin and colony stimulants were excluded.
Seventy-nine patients were included in the study between April and September 2023; 62.1% were male. Main pathologies included 41.9% oncohaematologic diseases, 18.9% human immunodeficiency virus, and 17.7% immune-mediated inflammatory diseases.
The reason for admission was related to the pathology for which outpatient medication was withdrawn in 27 patients (34.2%), and six patients (7.6 %) were admitted due to an AE of the medication withdrawn in outpatients. Pharmaceutical interventions (PI) were performed in 21.5% of the patients reviewed, and 76.5% were accepted. PI reasons included discontinuation of treatment (64.7 %), modification (17.7 %), initiation (11.8 %) and monitoring (5.9 %).
With our protocol, we want to show that outpatients within the pool of patients admitted to a hospital are a priority target group. For these patients, the hospital pharmacist can improve treatment during hospitalization with a high degree of pharmaceutical intervention.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Daniele Mengato, Laura Camuffo, Anna Zanin, Fernando Baratiri, Barbara Roverato, Franca Benini, Francesca Venturini
PPC patients are children with chronic or terminal illnesses requiring a high intensity of care. Because of their criticality, a strict clinical monitoring is needed, as well as personalised therapeutic strategies.
The paediatric palliative care (PPC) unit aims to provide paediatric patients with the best possible care in the management of their disease to ensure the optimal quality of life. The pharmacist has joined the interdisciplinary team with the aim of improving drug management in both acute inpatient and chronic therapies.
From August 2021, the clinical pharmacist joined the PPC staff with the aim of improving medicine management. The pharmacist, primarily, took charge of the medication review process. Individual therapies were periodically reviewed by the multidisciplinary team on the basis of admissions and clinical changes. In addition, a formulary manual for healthcare professionals was drafted, with the description of the crushability of the most commonly used pharmaceutical forms in clinical practice by collecting and keeping up-to-date information from national and international handbooks.
Over the past eight months, initial drug reviews have been carried out for all 169 patients followed by the PPC unit, with collegial re-evaluations cyclically carried out for the most critical patients (15). These patients had at least 10 drugs to take each day and therefore assessments were made to simplify treatment regimens by providing 37 suggestions to physicians with the aim of reducing the risk of interactions and facilitating home therapy management. With regard to the handling of pharmaceutical forms, many galenic formulations have been proposed in order to reduce the crushing of solid forms as much as possible. Most of the suggestions were discussed and accepted by the medical team.
Clinical pharmacist’s intervention is crucial in the management of terminal or chronic therapies for critically ill patients. Next step will be the analysis of caregivers’ care burden, through a specific questionnaire that has already been validated, so as to improve the home management of this particular category of patients.
Selection, Procurement and Distribution
Alina Shramko, Veronika Haziahmetova
Based on the results of the analysis, it is possible to answer the question whether it is advisable to spend financial resources, using the example of one healthcare facility; what steps should be taken to rationalize drug procurement; which drugs should be considered first of all for inclusion/exclusion from the procurement list.
Currently, ABC/VEN analysis is one of the most effective pharmacoeconomical methods recommended by WHO for the use in the healthcare system. The use of pharmacoeconomic methods is carried out in accordance with the inherent effective use of drugs, and is carried out strictly in accordance with the principles of evidence-based medicine.
The ABC/VEN analysis was conducted based on data from the pharmacy of the LPI containing the costs of purchasing medicines during 2020. The VEN category was determined after a thorough review of the evidence available to us about the effectiveness, safety and cost of drugs.
The cost of drug provision to healthcare facilities in 2020 amounted to 62 943 951,38 rubles. The number of international generic name purchased and used was 355. About 35% of the funds were used for a group of vital medicines. The cost of the necessary medicines amounted to 43% of the funds – this corresponds to WHO recommendations.
In accordance with the ATX-classification, drugs affecting blood formation and blood are in the lead in terms of the volume of costs – 40.9% of all costs.
The drug is enoxaparin sodium, the leader in terms of costs in 2020. It is a direct anticoagulant (low molecular weight heparins with a molecular weight about 4500 daltons), which has an antithrombotic effect (2.38% of the total budget).
Also, the top ten leaders in terms of costs included saline sodium chloride solution – 6.1% of the annual budget, which probably indicates irrational excessive use of infusion therapy.
The application of pharmacoeconomical methods and principles of evidence-based medicine allowed us to assess the feasibility of drug procurement and serves to rationalize the use of medicines.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Pernille Printzlau, Nanna Skyttegaard Mortensen, Signe Kristensen, Troels Bygum Knudsen, Nathalie King Otoo
When the pharmacists make medication reviews it is often a long, detailed review with several interventions. A tool that would quickly give the physician an overview of the interventions suggested by the pharmacist was needed. Furthermore, a tool was needed in the process of shared decision making between the physician and the patient regarding the possibilities of deprescribing.
We made a tool to improve the interdisciplinary collaboration around medication reviews and to help the process of shared decision making. The tool categorises interventions suggested by the pharmacist in red-yellow-green boxes, indicating the order of the interventions recommended by the pharmacist.
The tool was developed and tested by using the Model of Improvement. The physician stated that the tool gave him the needed overview and, in his experience, furthermore added value by visualising the interventions to the patient. Patients were interviewed after the consultation to evaluate how they perceived the tool and whether they felt involved in the decision making regarding their treatment and deprescribing.
A manageable and operationalisable tool for the physician to get a quick overview of the interventions suggested by the pharmacist. Furthermore, the tool visualises the interventions to the patient and supports the process of shared decision making during the consultation.
At our hospital we have clinical pharmacists making medication reviews at several different wards. The next step is to distribute the tool to pharmacists at other wards to strengthen the interdisciplinary collaboration and ensure the largest profit of the pharmacist’s medication reviews. We are also working on developing a similar tool to categorise found side effects to help the physician when deprescribing.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Majken Nørskov Petersen, Dorthe Bonnerup, Louise Thorsen, Lona Louring Christrup, Sune Puggaard Vogt Straszek, Charlotte Olesen
Medication review with patient interview provides the opportunity to clarify the patient’s overall drug intake along with identifying the patient’s experienced side effects. Medication review with patient interview we believe gives a more realistic picture of experienced drug related problems (DRP) and potentially DRP. This again makes the medication review more relevant and useful to the doctors.
The initiative took place in the Department of Affective Disorders, at Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark. Initially, the medication review was performed by hospital pharmacists without patient interview based only on medical records. We implemented a patient interview to give a more clinically relevant medication review. The interview included a structured questionnaire on typical side effects of antipsychotics.
The cost of a new workflow is always weighed against the outcome. We therefore planned and conducted a pilot study. The cost was measured as the time used for the patient interview and it was 17 minutes on average. We used DRP as the outcome. DRP is an accessible measure for the immediate outcome of a medication review. Sixteen medication reviews without patient interview were conducted and the same 16 patients were interviewed for a second medication review. Patient interview increased the number of identified DRP from 52 to 68. Due to the interview 28 new DRP were identified and 12 DRP found before the interview were withdrawn due to irrelevance.
Patient interview has been implemented in one of three inpatient psychiatric wards and in one of four outpatient clinics where the pharmacists conduct medication review. The structured questionnaire has been further developed and now includes common side effects caused by antipsychotics, antidepressants, benzodiazepines and mood stabilizers.
We still use the pilot study to show how medication review can be more relevant by using patient interview. The hospital pharmacy in Aarhus works on several levels in order to implement medication review, preferably with patient interview.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Ángel Guillermo Arévalo Bernabé, Pilar Lalueza Broto, Jordi Serracanta Doménech, Jacinto Caparrós Baena, José Manuel Collado Delfa, Jordi Aguilera Sáez, Romy Rossich Verdés, Pablo Sánchez Sancho, Juan Carlos Juárez Giménez, Maria Queralt Gorgas Torné
The burns unit of a third-level hospital includes a patient’s great heterogeneity depending on his population group and his clinical condition (extension, degree and depth of his burns, etiological agent of the burns and associated comorbidities), which makes the managing of these patients complex and they need multidisciplinary solutions. In addition, extensive burns provoke physiopatological alterations that involve changes in the pharmacokinetical and the pharmacodynamical modelling of some drugs. The knowledge that the pharmacist has about the changes that take place in vascular dynamics, the clearance and the distribution volume of the drugs, and the degree of union from these to plasmatic proteins, makes his active participation in the care of the burns patient, and in the optimisation of his pharmacotherapeutic plan, very interesting.
The integration of the pharmacist into a multidisciplinary group of assistance to the burns patient constituted as the Managing Committee of Cases and was integrated by plastic surgery, intensive medicine, intensive paediatric medicine, preventive medicine, infectious diseases, psychiatry, psychology, social work and infirmary, as well as pharmacy.
A protocol was devised that standardises and systematises the review of the pharmacotherapeutic plan of all patients in the burns unit, including burn critical and paediatric. Also, there is included a model of record and codificate of pharmaceutical interventions. The multidisciplinary group meets weekly and every patient is analysed from all clinical points of view, the pharmacist intervening in relation to the pharmacotherapeutic and nutritional plan.
The active integration of the pharmacist has been achieved in the clinical group of assistance to the burns patient. In addition, there has been created a collaborative attitude that has benefited joint projects of investigation. The degree of acceptance of the offers of modification that the pharmacist realises is 90%.
The following step must be, depending on the obtained results, to establish improvement assistance measures, including the accomplishment of protocols and the development of investigation projects that help to generate knowledge about the use of some drugs in burns patients, such as immunoglobulin or proteolitic enzymes for the extraction of bed sores.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Charlotte Olesen
In the Regional Hospital in Horsens, Central Denmark Region (covering 217,000 citizens) medication reviews by clinical pharmacists were performed on a few wards. Patients were selected to receive medication reviews on the basis of pre-defined criteria. The criteria were not evidence-based and were individual for each ward and pharmacist. This screening was time-consuming, as we screened every patient in the EPS to find relevant patients for medication review. Assuming that patients at high risk of medication errors will benefit most from medication reviews, we wanted to identify, using an evidence-based algorithm, these patients automatically across all wards at the hospital, thereby reducing resources during screening and allowing more time on the relevant patients.
An algorithm, to identify patients who would benefit most from a medication review, was developed using data from the Electronic Prescribing System (EPS). The system could produce a list of patients daily considered relevant for medication review.
MEdication RIsk Score (MERIS), a validated algorithm to identify patients in high risk of medication errors, was implemented using data from the EPS. Each hospitalised patient’s risk score was automatically calculated, and a list with risk scores was generated. Patients with highest risk were selected to receive a medication review by a clinical pharmacist. We validated the algorithm on two wards. The variables used in MERIS are reduced renal function, the total number of drugs and the risk of individual drugs to cause harm and interactions.
Instead of individual and time-consuming screening, electronic uniform screening has been implemented in our clinical pharmacy service. Our limited time is now used carrying out medication review on patients with the highest risk of medication errors instead of patients with less benefit.
The electronic version of MERIS is now used on two wards at our hospital. The next step is to include more wards so all patients with high-risk factors will receive a medication review from a clinical pharmacist. Furthermore, clinical pharmacists in other hospitals in the Central Denmark Region will also implement the electronic algorithm.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Maria Kundracikova, Petra Pölzleitner, Katharina Ocko, Bernadette Aretin, Barbara Datterl, Klara Jadrna, Eva-Luise Hobl, Martin Holbik, Sonja Steininger-Salmer, Helga Fend, Gerda Laml-Wallner, Martina Anditsch, Gunar Stemer
Due to limited human ressources (8 FTE) in the medicines information and clinical pharmacy department only selected wards could be provided with daily clinical pharmacists’ presence offering medication review, patient discharge counselling and ward round participation. To expand the reach of our clinical services, two further service pillars were introduced complementing the already existing services.
The Vienna General Hospital is a 1900 bed university hospital in which patients and health care professionals have access to hospital pharmacists’ expertise via various channels. In addition to already existing services (i.e. provision of hospital-wide medicines information and clinical pharmacy services on particularly selected wards) two new services (i.e. e-pharmacy consult and a dedicated drug interactions and pharmacotherapy clinic) have recently been implemented.
As ward services are staff-intensive, alternatives to expand the access of patients and health care professionals to the hospital pharmacists’ expertise were examined. An e-pharmacy consult was designed, implemented, and promoted in collaboration with the hospital IT department. E-consults can electronically be requested by all wards (e.g. for medication review, patient counselling), but mainly aim at those areas which are not regularly covered by a clinical pharmacist. E-consults are executed by the medicines information pharmacist on duty. Recently, a special clinic was implemented as a collaborative project with the clinical pharmacology department addressing the specific medicines-related needs of patients with complex medication regimens.
The scope of services provided by the department currently comprises four pillars: (1) provision of medicines information (2016: 1.200 requests), (2) clinical pharmacy services (2016: 9.000 medication-related problems prevented), (3) pharmacy e-consults, and (4) the drug interactions and pharmacotherapy clinic. While the scope and reach of services was expanded by diversification, the two new services are operated with existing ressources after reassignment of tasks.
After the implementation of new services (i.e. e-consult, clinic) constant promotion is needed to increase the awareness level among health care professionals in the hospital. Quality assurance and continuity of service provision is crucial for acceptance.
Education and Research
Sophie Renet, Florian Le seigneur, Ratiba Haddad, Andre Rieutord, Marie Camille Chaumais
The high turn over rate of medical and pharmacy residents (every 6 months) could jeopardize the patient’s care management as they generally lack of appropriate skills upon arrival. Our former process medication review was relying on individual and heterogeneous competencies of pharmacy residents likely to lead to sub-optimal medication review and treatment optimisation. We had to design a training program for residents according to the constraints of time and characteristics of related treatment of the considered clinical ward recruited patients.
A training program for pharmacy residents was developed and implemented. The aim was to develop the skills of the residents to allow them to perform, after 72 hours, a secure, optimized and standardized (SOS) medication review orders, according to the specificities and the “real-life practice” of the clinical department.
Through a collaborative approach (residents and seniors pharmacists, physicians, PhD student in education sciences), ADDIE (Analyse, Design, Development, Implantation, Evaluation) method was used. First, the most frequent pathologies and drugs prescribed in the cardiology department were identified to define specificities and thus custom the educational needs and skills that residents have to acquire to ensure a SOS medication review orders. The program included a 3 steps process over 3 days: (1) recognize the organisation and learning tools; (2) practice 3 clinical medication review orders simulation; (4) assess and feed-back with a senior clinical pharmacist. Some learning tools were developed: a training tool kit to guide the learners ; an aid kit, including a SOS medication review orders algorithm to follow throughout the whole process. Two years after implementation, 4 pharmacy residents have used this training program.
Our 72-hours-training program is routinely used for new pharmacy residents. It has been implemented successfully with a high acceptance. They also felt more comfortable to suggest therapeutic advices to the physicians.
The proof of concept of SOS was successfully done. We are currently extending it for 5th year pharmacy students and develop similar training program for other clinical wards (Surgery, oncology, immunology). In 2017, we expect to share it with our pharmacist colleagues working in the two closest hospitals.
