Implementation Ambassador Profile: Germany-Andreas von Ameln-Mayerhofer

Date: 

Thursday, October 12, 2017 - 11:30

 

I am a hospital pharmacist working in the Department of Pharmacy in Sindelfingen-Boeblingen Hospital. My specialties

are clinical pharmacy, antibiotic stewardship and therapeutic drug monitoring.

When was the first time you learned about the European Statements of Hospital Pharmacy?

I attended the meeting of the German Society of Clinical Pharmacy (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Klinische Pharmazie, DGKPha) in Konstanz some years ago where I had the pleasure to enjoy the splendid and lively talk of our colleague Roberto Frontini

who very nicely described the European Statements Project.

How did you become involved with the project?

My motivation for the project originated several discussions with colleagues when we realised that hospital

pharmacy should be strongly supported and we needed to do something in order to increase the quality of our work throughout the whole country, i.e. in every hospital.

Within the ADKA, the German Hospital Pharmacists Association, I was very lucky to get a very friendly and good contact to our EAHP delegates, Dr. Torsten Hoppe-Tichy and Dr. Steffen Amann, who motivated me to get deeper involved with the EAHP Statements Project.

Why do you think the implementation of the Statements will be good for Germany ?

In my opinion, the statements are represent high quality measures of how we should work in our profession. Only by doing this we will become more visible. But first of all I hope, that quality and safety of patient medication in hospital will further increase.

What do you think  are the biggest needs and barriers for Statement Implementation in Germany?

In our country and in many other countries in Europe, a great number of people employed in the health system are working hard and already on a high level. Nevertheless, there are many hospitals where pharmacists struggle and try hard to fulfil all requirements and do a good job but have only a small staff. Especially in this case, financial support is essentially needed to get the hospital pharmacy substantially advanced.

Do you think the self-assessment tool will help hospital pharmacists in Germany to move towards the implementation of the Statements within their hospitals?

Yes, definitely it will. First of all, everybody has to try to reflect its own situation. After that, possible problems that have been identified within the self-assessment can be particularly addressed in order to improve the quality of our work. Lord Kelvin once said “if you can not measure it, you can not improve it”. For me, this statement is still valid.