During the 24th edition of its annual Congress, EAHP organised the first meeting between the Association and representatives from both its member associations and national competent authorities in order to openly discuss and answer any questions related to the Common Training Framework (CTF).
Petr Horák, EAHP President, shared background information on the CTF project and underlined that it is a legal tool used to achieve automatic professional qualification recognition across European Union countries. It aims at contributing to raise the standards in hospital pharmacy practice and thereby enhances the quality of, safety of, and equity of access to, patient care in every European country. EAHP’s President also conveyed the main benefits of implementing CTF and focused on the positive patient outcomes. These include, but are not limited to, improved educational and professional standards, increased mobility and, therefore, opportunities to get first-hand knowledge and skills, enhanced best-practice sharing between specialisations in different countries and, over time, a higher number of well-trained hospital pharmacists. Petr Horák also emphasized that EAHP fully respects the need to reflect national and regional realities by constantly engaging and communicating with all national authorities on the matter.
The meeting also featured a presentation made by the Vice-President of the Spanish Society of Hospital Pharmacists (SEFH), Ana Lozano, on the national hospital pharmacy specialisation programme and the fact that a recent mapping of the programme against the CTF competency framework showed a level of compliance of 84%. At the moment, the members of one of the CTF working groups are engaged in the same mapping exercise.
The discussion that ensued was fruitful and focused both on examining the measurable benefits the CTF could bring to each national health system and on procedural aspects related to its actual implementation. EAHP reiterated its commitment to liaise closely with each national authority and address any challenges which may arise along the way.
Within the CTF project, EAHP has developed a competency framework to deliver the vision of practice set out in the European Statements of Hospital Pharmacy. Detailed information on the CTF, its rationale, aims, envisaged benefits per stakeholder as well as its implementation process are available on the present website. Stay tuned for updates, publications and milestones!