The Basel Statements on the future of hospital pharmacy.

The Global Conference on the Future of Hospital Pharmacy was hosted by the Hospital Pharmacy Section of the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) as part of the 68th Annual Congress of FIP. Hospital pharmacists from around the globe met in Basel, Switzerland, on August 30 and 31, 2008, and successfully developed these consensus statements reflecting the profession’s preferred vision of practice in the hospital setting. Before the Global Conference (GC) convened, each registrant was assigned to a working group for one of the six aspects of hospital pharmacy addressed by the conference and was asked to review the related review article and to discuss, via email, potential consensus statements. At the GC, the working groups, led by the authors of the review articles, developed final statements that were presented to official representatives for consensus scoring. During the voting session, official country representatives used a 4-point Likert scale, with defined anchors (strongly agree; agree; disagree; strongly disagree), to vote on each statement with the use of an audience-response system. Consensus in favor of each statement was pre-defined as greater than 50% of votes cast being “strongly agree” or “agree.” During the voting at the GC, the average proportion of votes cast as “strongly agree” or “agree” was 97.5%. Of 5259 votes cast, only 111 were “disagree” and 22 were “strongly disagree.” Across all votes cast, 62.8% were “strongly agree,” and 21.7% were “agree.” A total of 26 statements (35%) had 100% consensus (“strongly agree” or “agree”). The minimum level of consensus for any statement was 90.4%. Subsequent to the GC, based on feedback received from official representatives and other participants, two pairs of the original 74 statements were merged, the wording of one statement was revised for clarity, and three new statements were added. These changes were submitted to all official representatives for an email ballot, and the results are included here along with the original statements that were not modified. The final statements (the Basel Statements) number 75 (Table 1). Terms used in the Basel Statements are defined in a glossary included in the Proceedings.