The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists' (EAHP), a working community of national associations of hospital pharmacists, final BEAM summit event on Management spreads the message that hospital pharmacists should know how to manage people, performance and resources and be able to facilitate innovation, improvement and transformation.

The Dusseldorf summit, held between May 17 – 20, which was attended by 44 hospital pharmacists from 24 different countries and was the fourth and final part of the EAHP’s BEAM programme. BEAM has been a series of 4 training events aimed at raising the skills and knowledge of hospital pharmacists across Europe in the key competency areas of Biotechnology, Evidence-based medicine, aspects of compounding and management. BEAM is part of the EAHP’s Academy Programme of educational events.

Participants at the management summit learned how to develop their self-awareness and build and maintain professional relationships with colleagues. There was also a strong focus on critical evaluation, impact assessment and how to effectively deliver improvement in a hospital pharmacy. Guiding participants through these areas of learning were a range of keynote speakers from Canada, the USA, Denmark, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands.

Speaking about the event EAHP President Dr Roberto Frontini said: “Developing the hospital pharmacy profession and advancing the role of the hospital pharmacist are at the very heart of EAHP’s mission and purpose. That is why the BEAM Summit series has been so important, offering real opportunities for hospital pharmacists across Europe to increase their knowledge and skills. More importantly than that though, they must now take what they learned back to their own countries and disseminate it to colleagues. We call this “teaching the teachers”.”

He further added, “I know that the final summit of the BEAM project on Management was particularly keenly anticipated as the pharmacist’s role in managing and creating change in hospitals is generally underappreciated. Yet this role is always growing as the pace of innovation in health quickens, and the need to meet future challenges becomes ever more critical. I hope in this respect the BEAM Summit series has helped hospital pharmacists to meet the needs of tomorrow. As well as the participants, EAHP itself has learned a lot from putting together the BEAM series and I am looking forward to the announcement of exciting news about the future of the EAHP Academy later this year.”

The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) is a working community of national associations of hospital pharmacists. Its membership includes representatives of national hospital pharmacy associations in almost all the European Union (EU) member states, in addition to Switzerland, Norway, Serbia, Turkey, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia (FYROM) and Bosnia Herzegovina.