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
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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
Mª Antonia Meroño-Saura, María López-Morte, Taida Rodríguez-Martínez, Pilar Pacheco-López, Consuelo García-Motos
The publication of the NIOSH list and its application by INSHT in Spain has changed the concept of “Hazardous drug” in terms of its handling and administration, as well as personnel training involved in its management.
The main objective is to label every drug considered “Hazardous” and to review the medication included in the Emergency Department kit in a tertiary hospital.
Literature about Hazardous drugs was reviewed. All the drugs included in the Emergency Department kit belonging were identified and classified according to their level published in the NIOSH list. A kit’s review was carried out on site, as well as a Hazardous drugs’ categorisation by adequate labels.
6 out of 239 drugs included in the emergency kit were labelled as Hazardous drugs, and could be found in 9 different presentations. Regarding its risk level according to the NIOSH list; chloramphenicol, risperidone and all different presentations of phenytoin were classified as level 2. Acenocoumarol, colchicine/dicycloverine and all different presentations of valproic acid were classified as level 3.
The following incidents were detected;
– Lack of identification: 8 out of the total number of drugs presented identification errors.
– Location error: 4 out of the total number of drugs were not well located.
– Photosensitive: 56 out of the total drugs were photosensitive, of which 11 were not correctly identified or stored.
– Expired drugs: 12 drugs, whose total stock was 399 units. 51 out of the total amount were expired.
After this review, the following measures were carried out:
– Orange labelling for Hazardous drugs’ identification, regardless of their risk level.
– Misidentified drugs were re-labelled, and those that were misplaced were placed in their assigned spot.
– Photosensitive drugs were correctly identified by blue labels and properly preserved.
– Expired drugs were withdrawn.
Simplifying Hazardous drugs’ identification by a categorisation following a colour code could lead to a safer manipulation by the professionals. During the review of the kit, several incidents were detected and sorted out, which avoided possible medication-related errors. Therefore, it is necessary to establish several control measures in emergency kits in order to avoid errors and improve the safety in the use of drugs.
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
Luis Pérez de Amezaga Tomás, María Magdalena Parera Pascual, Mónica Sanz Muñoz, Catalina March Frontera, Gonzalo González Morcillo, Alejandra Mandilego Garcia, Álvaro Medina Guerrero, Ana Filgueira Posse, Montserrat Vilanova Boltó
Administration of intravenous KCl produces hyperkalaemia and this can result in cardiac arrest and death. The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) as well as other security agencies have recommended the withdrawal of KCl 2M from ward stock. This project was born as a response to these recommendations. We focused on a group of patients where these practices have not been extensively implemented. The aim of the protocol was to standardise the prescription, preparation, dispensation and administration of KCl to neonates in our hospital.
Development of a protocol that standardises diluted potassium intravenous solutions for neonates (including those preterm over 28 weeks of gestation). This allowed us to remove concentrated potassium chloride (KCl) 2M from neonatal care units in our hospital. For this purpose, the hospital pharmacy centralised the preparation and distribution of KCl ready-to-use infusions.
The elaboration of the protocol took place as follows: • A multidisciplinary team designed KCl ready-to-use solutions that met the requirements of the newborn: – Glucose 10% 250mL with 5 mEq KCl (20mEq/L solution) – Glucose 10% 250mL with 10 mEq KCl (40mEq/L solution). • The hospital pharmacy centralised the preparation of these solutions. A risk assessment was performed and determined an expiration date of 7 days. • These solutions were stocked at all neonatal care units: Intensive Care Unit, Hospitalized Paediatric Unit and Paediatric Emergency Unit. • Weekly, the hospital pharmacy distributes these solutions and disposes of the expired ones. • Only ready-to-use KCl solutions were able to prescribe at the electronic prescription programme. • A formation plan was implemented to train all the professionals involved in neonatal care.
The protocol was implemented in November 2016. Since then, 65 patients have been treated with 20mEq/L solution and only 1 patient with 40mEq/L solution. No remarkable imbalances in electrolytes have been detected resulting from the standardisation of the fluid therapy with KCl. Only 3 incidents have been registered. All of them were prescription errors (solution selection); they reached the patient but without damage.
Nowadays, we are developing a stability study of the KCl solutions in order to assess the appropriateness of the expiration date.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
M. T. Barrera, O. Carrascosa, P. Madrid, A. Aguado, R. Martínez , N. Argüello, E. Cuellar, M. Vela, C. Jimenez, S. Payan, O. Sánchez
Lack of stock delays medication administration by nurses. This situation also generates hospital warden displacements to Pharmacy Service and telephone interruptions of Pharmacy technicians’ work. The main aim was to amend stock lack management to improve patient security during medication preparation and administration. The secondary objectives were: reduce interruptions of other health professionals and automate warehouse exits, avoiding errors of manual updating of Pharmacy stock.
This tool is part of “Safe Medication Administration in Hospitalization/Avoid Interruptions” project. A “button” was included in the nursing administration view of the electronic prescription programme, which when activated automatically generates a request to the Pharmacy Service for a dose of required medication. Hospital Information Systems were contacted for the design. All requests generated during the administration of medication were automatically received in Pharmacy Service. They were grouped by plant, listed, deducted from stock and dispensed at the agreed times.
The tool was developed by Hospital Information Systems, in collaboration with nursing, and staff training was carried out for correct handling of the tool. Also, medication dispensing schedules were agreed with the hospital warden. 15 days before tool implementation, the Pharmacy Service analysed all medication requests made from hospitalisation. Data collected were: plant and shift requested, reason, existence of pattern, requested medication, requested units, notice to auxiliaries to collect medication. After the first week of implementation, the same assessment of requests was made during the same period to compare and evaluate the impact of this tool implementation.
When both periods were compared, prescribed medication requests decreased from 198 to 15, this difference being statistically significant (Fisher’s exact test p=0.008). This difference meant significant reduction of interruptions in Pharmacy technicians’ daily work. Requests reasons were lack of dose in 43.4% (n=95) of cases, immediate prescriptions in 29.2% (n=64) of cases and treatment change in 20.5% (n=45) of cases. 29.2% of all requested medications belonged to the antimicrobial and antiviral group. 62% (n=135) of the total requests were received in the morning shift. Hospital warden displacements were significantly reduced when comparing both periods from 102 to 3 (Chi square test, p=0.006). This meant a significant reduction in interruptions in hospital warden work. It has been possible to standardise and improve efficiently nursing management of medication stock lack.
The incidents technical improvement is pending, as well as training of new nursing staff. It is possible to implement this tool in all hospital units that have electronic prescription.
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
José Marco-del Río, María Luisa Ibarra-Mira, Gregorio Romero-Candel, Ana Ramirez-Córcoles, Ana Valladolid-Walsh, Francisco Tomás Pagán-Nuñez
Our main goal was to improve patient’s safety, because we noticed that many patients did not take actually all the drugs that were prescribed by the physicians, and other times there were drugs that the patients were taking because they had an active prescription, but they were not supposed to. Additionally, we aimed to improve the drug-related information that the patients take home.
A programme which includes every patient admitted into the Internal Medicine department. It consists of three steps: clarification of chronic medication that the patients are taking, we handle them and updated schedule of their drugs upon discharge and we check the coherence with the active prescriptions.
We interview the patients during the admission in order to clarify and update the chronic medication that they are taking. When a patient is about to be discharged, the nurses call us, so at this moment we talk to the physician to know what changes are going to be made on the medication. To coordinate with the physicians and nurses, we had two meetings in which we established the timing of the programme, so the patients don’t have to wait too long for us. When we know the changes that the physician is going to make, we update the medication schedule to handle it to the patients or their family, and we explain to them the changes and how they should manage the new drugs. If any discrepancy or medication-related problem is detected, we talk to the physician to solve it.
In the last four months, we performed 180 discharges and we solved together with the physicians 20 discrepancies. Patients are now receiving more comprehensive information about their treatment.
To continue with the programme and broaden it to the rest of our hospital departments. Also we are working on a way of uploading our pharmacy schedules to the electronic medical record of the patients, so they can be available for every healthcare worker, which would improve even more the transitions of care.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Noelia Vicente Oliveros, María Muñoz García, Álvaro Ruigomez Saiz, Montserrat Ferre Masferrer, Teresa Bermejo Vicedo, Eva Delgado Silveira, Lucía Quesada Muñoz, Ana María Alvarez-Diaz
An analysis of the indicators of the perioperative process reflected the need to improve their quality. One of the causes of scheduled surgery cancellation was the lack of the follow up of the anaesthetist’s medication recommendations. Medications need to be carefully managed to prevent perioperative complications.
We designed and implemented a flow chart to ensure the patient compliance of anesthetist’s medication recommendations prior to surgery. We designed a protocol for the perioperative medication management.
A multidisciplinary group was formed with the management of the hospital and representatives of all the services involved in the perioperative process. The group designed the flow chart of the process by consensus. Patients were candidates to enter in this process if they were on treatment with anticoagulant or 2 or more medications from the following groups: antiplatelet, antihypertensives, antidiabetics. A pharmacist called by phone three times (the day before, the day of medication change, and the day after) to the patient to ensure the compliance of anaesthetist recommendations. If there was a lack of compliance, the pharmacist contacted the surgeon who was in charge of deciding if the surgery procedure continued as scheduled. Moreover, the domiciliary medication of these patients were reconcilliated and recorded in their health record. Healthcare professionals could consult it during hospital stay. The group designed a protocol for the perioperative medication management with different medical specialists.
The project started in April 2019. The pharmacist called patients with scheduled surgery of lower limbs. A total of 31 patients benefited from the new flow chart. The pharmacist detected 38 medication errors; two involved errors concerning the suspension of anticoagulant drugs prior to surgery and four implied antihypertensive drugs. Once, it was necessary to contact the surgeon. In this case, the surgeon decided to continue with the surgery as schedule. Fifty-seven medications suffered a change in the period between the anaesthestic visit and the surgery, nine of them belonged to the monitored medication group.
The next steps are to spread the flow chart to other patients, to distribute the protocol among hospital healthcare professionals and to implement a procedure for the reintroduction of the modified medication.
