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.
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Arnaud Potier, Béatrice Demoré, Alexandre Dony, Emmanuelle Divoux, Emmanuelle Boschetti, Laure-Anne Arnoux, Cédric Dupont, Jean-Christophe Calvo, David Piney, Virginie Chopard, Nathalie Cretin, Edith Dufay
Drug iatrogenia costs global health systems $52 billion annually. The third global patient safety challenge aims at reducing the global burden of iatrogenic medication-related harm by 50% within 5 years [1]. Pharmaceutical analysis is a fundamental activity, a regulatory obligation in many countries but remains a challenge. This practice is highly variable. A graphic definition of the target pharmaceutical analysis has been formalised in December 2017 which sets the basis for its digitalisation, effectively implemented since January 2019. The aim is to build a corpus of the most relevant PA to facilitate clinical pharmacist practice.
A computerised clinical pharmacy tool is integrated into the health information system of our group of hospitals (5000 beds) to promote efficiency of pharmaceutical analysis in order to improve patient safety. Pharmaceutical algorithms (PA) are conceptualised to improve drug related problems (DRP) detection and their resolution through pharmaceutical intervention (PI) according to a defined conduct to be held: anamnesis of subjective and objective elements of appreciation, DRP characterisation and PI transmission. Pharmaceutical analysis is performed by the use of PharmaClass® (Keenturtle). This software has been interfaced with 5 health data flow of two health facilities (1000 of the 2000 beds were tested): identity and patient flow, medication data, laboratory results examination, medical history, physiological constants. PA are partially encoded as rules in Pharmaclass® that issues alerts analysed by a pharmacist.
Health data are lacking of semantic interoperability which Pharmaclass® aims at overcoming from Electronical health record (EHR) queries in real time. A corpus of PA has been structured integrating the conduct to be held. PA were created by modeling the pharmaceutical experiment with the thread of criticality. PA were validated by consensus.
80 PA were encoded into Pharmaclass®: 40 are targeting serious adverse drug events. 1516 alerts were analysed and 539 PI transmitted during the 9-month test period.
This practice is applicable to any pharmaceutical analysis that uses data from an EHR. Clinical pharmacy societies should host and take care of updating corpus of PA. Its educational interest should be exploited. A European interest group for artificial intelligence in clinical pharmacy is being created.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Francesca Vecchione, Melania Rivano, Patrizia Tadini
The new process was developed in order to face the significant increase of ID management assigned to the Pharmacy, along with the logistic problems due to the several areas of storage, dispensing and administration. Additionally, it allowed to assure the effective use of ID reducing the risk of failure and improving the patient safety.
The Good Clinical Practice guidelines establish that the principal investigator (PI) can delegate the investigational drug management to a pharmacist. In our university teaching hospital with a large amount of clinical trials (CT), pharmacy service proposed an optimisation of ID (investigational drug) management through the elaboration of a form to request the ID. Along with this, we assigned each protocol to a specific type of management and we created an intranet site from where healthcare professionals can download the form.
The pharmacy service created for each CT a specific form organized into 5 sections. Section A, B and C were filled up with protocol information (name, centre code, PI) patient data (initials, patient code) and the treatment schedule. Section C, completed by data manager, showed the quantity of drug to be dispensed and the expected day of administration. Section D was completed with batch and expiry date. The form had to be signed by the pharmacist at the moment of the dispensation and signed back by the committed person who took it. Section E reminded the type of management assigned to the protocol. Five different types of management had been identified, based on the characteristics of storage, the activities required by the protocol (IWRS, unblinded pharmacist, drug preparation) and the dispensing method.
Data from January to June 2017 attested 60 ongoing protocols, 722 dispensations for patient, 237 drugs prepared by pharmacists and 986 in Chemotherapy preparation unit. The development of the new procedure ensured the ID tracking, the overcoming of logistical difficulties and an increase of the safety.
We are going to keep on improving the pharmacist role in CT by ensuring ID are handled, stored and correctly managed. The objective is to enhance the collaboration of clinical research professionals in the management of CT.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Antonios Markogiannakis, Georgios Pegkas, Calliope Allagianni, Stavroula Efstathiou, Despoina Makridaki
The term of AST has been introduced in Greek legislation since 2014 and should become the driving force to optimize antimicrobial therapy, especially for the protected antibiotics (PA): carbapenems, colistin and tigecycline. Unfortunately Greece ranks first in Europe in the consumption of the mentioned PA in hospitals, consequently the activation of AST constitutes national priority. The existing law frame defines that AST consists of four key member physicians (experienced in infectious diseases) plus the hospital pharmacist as coordinator of the group. As the number of serving pharmacists in Greece remains critically low, very few hospitals have actually activated the AST. The Panhellenic Association of Hospital Pharmacists (PEFNI) decided to organize regional meetings to enhance the involvement of pharmacists by sharing the practice of experienced colleagues running antibiotic stewardship programs (ASP) in their hospitals since fall of 2016.
We have described the sequential steps for the establishment of multidisciplinary Antibiotic Stewardship Team (AST) in Greek hospitals and prepared training material to increase involvement of hospital pharmacists.
We combined the strategies and procedures implemented in the three hospitals during last year, in a flowchart presenting the establishment, activation and feedback of the AST. We have developed an ASP for hospitals, with initial target to minimize the use of PA:. Functional options in each step have been described, making it flexible for the colleagues to selectively implement them in their hospitals. We also created specific educational material to use in regional meetings that PEFNI organizes.
The application of ASP and the education of hospital pharmacists as coordinators results in: • Reliable reporting of controlled use for the PA • Safer antimicrobial management practice • Economy on restricted pharmacotherapy budgets • Acknowledgement of the critical role of pharmacists by other healthcare professionals, the hospital manager and the authorities
• The basic flowchart can be broadened to include subsequent stewardship activities such as recording proper surveillance of more classes of antibiotics, assessment of antimicrobial surgical chemoprophylaxis and/or antifungal pharmacotherapy.
• Connection of local ASP reports to a national network for all hospitals will help towards the creation of a real-time antibiotics’ consumption database in Greece.
Clinical Pharmacy Services
M. Cabré Serres, T. Aguilella Vicente, E. Julián Avila, D. Rodríguez Cumplido, J.M. Pepió Vilaubí, M. Muñoz-García
As a part of a multicentric medication reconciliation (MR) study in the fragile patient, one of the phases of the project included primary care reconciliation so we had to create alliances and enable effective communication channels between the two levels of care.
During 2015, we started using direct messaging between hospital pharmacist (HP) and primary care physician. The messaging tool, which is available in SIRE and ECAP programs, allows you to send messages to all physicians caring for the patient. It also allows you to contact the usual pharmacy of the patient. Physicians receive messages automatically during the patient’s clinical course.
When patients were medically discharged, the HP performed MR. The HP contacted the next provider to inform them of changes in the medication list and safety alerts. When the patient visited the doctor, he already had the pharmacotherapy summary and pharmaceutical recommendations in the patient’s electronic clinical course. Afterwards, the HP assessed if the pharmaceutical interventions (PIs) had been accepted.
We started using the tool in January 2015. We performed 205 discharge reconciliations and have sent 143 messages. This would be 0.7 PIs/patient. PIs have been: 26.6% (n=38) remove medication, 21.0% (n=30) monitor treatment, 21.0% (n=30) increase adherence, 11.2% (n=16) modify dose, 8.4% (n=12) add medication, 6.3%(n=9) modify posology and 5.6% (n=8) replace medication. Finally, 72.7% (n=104) of PIs have been accepted and 27.3% (n=39) rejected. We can also analyse population characteristics and the drugs involved in the PIs.
We are breaking barriers between hospital and primary care with nexus of the HP, who has begun to be part of the medical team. We want to continue in this direction to improve the results of our PIs. We want to determine if our PIs improve health outcomes. Another current problem in the transition of care is hyperprescription treatments with proton pump inhibitors or benzodiazepines. A de-prescription programme could be the next step.
Introductory Statements and Governance
A. Frisch, D. Scharlemann-Moenks, K. Heinitz, R. Frontini
Limited resources require optimisation of pharmacists’ interventions (EAHP Statement 1.3). Due to the limited number of clinical pharmacists (5/1350 beds) only a few wards were served by the pharmacy. We aimed to improve the effectiveness by covering selected patients in all wards and compared the results with a classic visit.
Instead of visiting all patients in selected wards, pharmacists focused on patients with critical renal insufficiency across all wards.
The central laboratory identified patients as high risk when their glomerular filtration rates were <30 ml/min, and alerted the pharmacy via email. For those patients, the renal pharmacist analysed the prescribed medication at least twice weekly throughout their hospital stay for medication errors, dosing and interactions, and suggested alternatives where necessary. Interventions were discussed either directly with the doctors or by written advice. The major obstacle was the fact that clinical services by pharmacists were unknown in most wards and that some of the doctors were sceptical about the pharmacist`s competency. We overcame these obstacles by intensive collaboration with the nephrology department.
Over 20 months involving 4229 visits, the renal pharmacist analysed the medication of 2125 patients who had 11 different drugs on average. The pharmacist assessed 47 584 medications, resulting in 2900 interventions, of which 1292 were renal and 1608 other. The most common interventions for renal patients were dosage adjustments (20%), contraindications (16%) and interactions (10%). Overall, the number of interventions (6.1% of medication items) and their severity across all renal insufficiency patients exceeded those on the visceral surgical ward (2.4%) over the same time as a comparator, confirming the higher effectiveness of the intervention.
To conduct further studies on medication safety, we established a centre for drug therapy safety in collaboration with the faculty of pharmacy with the aim of discovering valid criteria for identifying other high risk patients.
