Introduction: The Japanese government implemented a community-based integrated care system that provides community healthcare resources for elderly people focusing on home health care in particular. To achieve this, interprofessional teams in the community need to function seamlessly. Thus, we explored the process by which healthcare professionals change their recognition of the relationships and problems among them through the dialogue of home health care promotion.Methods: We held the World Cafe to discuss with healthcare professionals about home health care in a city in Ibaraki Prefecture. All dialogues were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using thematic analysis.Results: Although healthcare professionals had strongly recognized the hierarchical relationship, they deepened their mutual understanding by sharing their background and values. While sharing the hope to make equitable relationships, they changed their recognition as follows: home health care was not "someone else's problem" but "their own problem" and "their own community's problem".Conclusion: It is necessary for healthcare professionals to share issues and explore methods to solve them in the community, and to change the relationships among stakeholders because problems related to home health care promotion are complex. This study clarified that healthcare professionals are motivated to seek solutions to problems proactively via their relationships in interprofessional teams in the community.

Seminars on physical assessment (PA) are being held at a wide variety of universities and medical institutions. However, the current situation shows that the number of pharmacists practicing PA at medical sites is still very small. We therefore conducted a questionnaire survey, targeting all 70 individuals who took part in a PA seminar carried out in 2013 at Daiichi University of Pharmacy, to investigate the reasons for pharmacists being unable to practice PA at present, and then we studied the types of seminars that would be needed for them to practice PA in the future. The results showed that 91% of pharmacists, currently working in a pharmacy, who took part in the seminar and 100% of hospital pharmacists hoped to practice PA, if possible, although they had no immediate plans for implementing PA. Of those who participated in the current seminar, only 10% felt that they could practice PA immediately after taking the seminar just once, although the degrees of their understanding of the seminar content and mastering of the techniques were high. Our findings suggested additional training and studies to be necessary in order for the participating pharmacists to practice PA.

Introduction: We investigated the relationship between knowledge of the common cold and desire for medical treatment.Methods: We administered an anonymous self-questionnaire about the common cold to citizens receiving health checkups in City X, Ibaraki Prefecture, between August and September 2012. We assessed citizens' knowledge about the common cold and whether they sought medical treatment for it, in addition to their demographic attributes.Results: We included 1079 citizens (response rate, 74.5%) in the analysis. The majority of participants believed that receiving intravenous (IV) infusions or injections for the common cold led to faster recovery times (75.9%). Roughly half of the participants (42.0%) did not believe that antibiotics are not effective against virus-based colds, while 28.6% were unsure. Finally, endorsement of the questionnaire items "taking cold medications early leads to faster recovery" (OR: 1.61) and "IV infusions or injections lead to faster recovery times" (OR: 1.86) were associated with a desire for medical treatment.Conclusion: Our results indicate that patients' knowledge about the common cold and their understanding of treatment options available at medical institutions were inadequate. Furthermore, we found that an awareness of how cold medicines, IV infusions, or injections may shorten treatment duration was associated with a desire for treatment.