Lessons learned from COVID-19 – EAHP Survey on the future crisis preparedness of hospital pharmacies

The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) has launched a survey to collect information on the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey on the future crisis preparedness of hospital pharmacies targets EAHP’s members from 35 different European countries.

For hospital pharmacists frequent shortages of medicines which impact patient care are not a new phenomenon. EAHP has worked on this issue for 10 years. Research conducted by the Association in 2014, 2018 and 2019 showed that the impact that shortages have on patient outcomes and the working time of hospital pharmacists’ needed to solve them has significantly increased. Due to reports about the shortages of medicines used for patients in intensive care units these problems seemed to have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.