Objective: In conveying and providing drug information, it is essential to ensure correct understanding of such information at clinical practice sites.  We thus used a hospital’s drug information newsletter (DI News) to analyze factors affecting how well the drug safety information provided is understood by recipients.
Methods: Targeting nurses who work at Kushiro Red Cross Hospital, we used the DI News to provide information on changes in insulin preparations, and then implemented Questionnaire Surveys 1 and 2.  An implemented Questionnaire comparison was made among the number of years at work (6 groups), between wards of internal medicine and surgical departments (2 groups), and among various wards (12 groups), and the factors affecting the degree of understanding of information were analyzed.
Results: Compared with Survey 1, the degree of understanding improved dramatically in all groups in Survey 2.  However, no significant differences were seen among the groups in the comparison based on the number of years at work, or in the comparison between internal medicine and surgical departments.  The comparison among various hospital wards, however, showed large differences in the scores for Surveys 1 and 2, with significant differences among the groups being documented (p<0.001).
Discussion: In providing important pharmaceutical information, it was deemed necessary to gain a deeper understanding of the differences among various wards and to offer individual assistance tailored to each ward.  This study revealed the importance of meticulous, personalized information services provided by ward pharmacists.

Goto mentioned that we should consider the Continuing Education Unit (CEU) system, or the additional training after graduation which fulfills the conditions for the practitioner of acupuncture and moxibustion to function as a national health care provider. There he entertained another proposal that it was necessary to also consider some special education before the graduation. Moreover, he proposed considering the license renewal nature as appeal into society. Yamada said that the essence of an acupuncture and moxibustion therapy was to alleviate the general malaise. That is, a home practitioner of acupuncture and moxibustion in stead of a family physician. It was said that the establishment of the CEU system required that a consorted effort of acupuncture colleges, the industry, and the academia. Kitakouji introduced their CEU system developed with the cooperation of the Meiji College of Oriental Medicine Teaching Hospital and the Acupuncture and Moxibustion Center. The content of trainings after the graduation is set to teach how to communicate and work accordingly with the physicians. Ogawa suggested that we should make a new advanced licensure system (license to practice). Yamaoka introduced the after graduation training program at the Foundation for Oriental Medicine Research, Ehime Prefectural Central Hospital. Following are the the contents of training- (1) Moxibustion Technique and Care, (2) Approach from the point of the Whole Person Medicine (Chronological Health Analysis), etc.

To investigate the effectiveness of Maobushisaishin-to (traditional Japanese herbal medicine; Tsumura TJ-127) in treating the common cold, a clinical comparison between Maobushisaishin-to and a general common cold drug was conducted using the sealed envelope method. The study involved 83 patients in the TJ-127 group and 88 patients in the general cold drug group. No differences in age, gender or the period from the onset of the disease to the beginning of treatment were observed between the two groups.
The results indicated greater than moderate improvement in 81.9% of the TJ-127 group, compared with 60.3% of the compound cold drug group (p<0.01). Further analysis of symptom diaries kept by the patients indicated that TJ-127 provided more rapid relief for symptoms such as fever, feeling feverish, coughing and phlegm than did the general cold drug. No side effects were observed for the TJ-127. These results suggest that TJ-127 is effective in the treatment of the common cold.