EAHP definition of hospital pharmacy

EAHP members, meeting during its 38th General Assembly, in June 2008 (Copenhagen, Denmark) adopted the following definition of hospital pharmacy and hospital pharmacist:

Hospital pharmacy is the health care service, which comprises the art, practice, and profession of choosing, preparing, storing, compounding, and dispensing medicines and medical devices, advising healthcare professionals and patients on their safe, effective and efficient use.

Hospital pharmacy is a specialised field of pharmacy which forms an integrated part of patient health care in a health facility.

Hospital pharmacy is the profession that strives to continuously maintain and improve the medication management and pharmaceutical care of patients to the highest standards in a hospital setting.

Hospital pharmacists provide services to patients and health care professionals in hospitals.

The missions of the hospital pharmacist

• to be part of the medication management in hospitals, which encompasses the entire way in which medicines are selected, procured, delivered, prescribed, administered and reviewed to optimise the contribution that medicines make to producing informed and desired outcomes

• to enhance the safety and quality of all medicine related processes affecting patients of the hospital

• to ensure the 7 “rights” are respected: right patient, right dose, right route, right time, right drug with the right information and documentation

EAHP supports the FIP Global Statements on Hospital Pharmacy - September 2008

The Global Conference on the Future of Hospital Pharmacy was hosted by the FIP Hospital Pharmacy Section as part of the 68th Annual Congress of the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) on 30th and 31st August 2008. A total of 348 hospital pharmacists representing 98 nations met in Basel and successfully developed the attached consensus statements reflecting the profession’s preferred vision of practice in the hospital setting.

Prior to the conference, facilitators commissioned by the FIP Hospital Pharmacy Section prepared literature reviews on each of six topics, covering all areas of the medicine use process in hospitals, including the procurement of medicines, preparation and distribution, prescribing, administration of medicines, and the monitoring of patient outcomes. In addition, issues related to human resources and training were addressed. Medication safety was an important consideration in all consensus statement development.

Each facilitator also developed draft consensus statements for consideration. In advance of the Conference, all draft materials were circulated to working groups comprised of official representatives and other participants, and a “virtual dialogue” was conducted. Working group members exchanged comments and suggestions regarding these drafts via Email, allowing many statements to be refined in advance of the meeting in Basel.
Several overarching statements covering essential concepts regarding hospital pharmacy practice, but not unique to any one of the six working group topics, were added in advance of the Conference.

All of the approved consensus statements, along with evidence-based literature reviews that support the statements, will be published in early 2009 in a special supplement of the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy. Free access to the full proceedings will be made possible through the Journal web site.

For more information about the Global Conference, see the Conference web site at www.fip.org/globalhosp.

The statements are listed in the documents below.

FIP First Global Conference on Hospital Pharmacy Statements:

	Statements in Enlish
	Statements in German, courtesy of Elisabeth Amann, ADKA

Last update: 10 September 2009