Objective: A hospital Formulary (HF) is useful not only for providing a list of formulary drugs, but also for drug safety management and clinical practice in hospitals.  Our Pharmacy Division serves as a clinical training facility for the Faculty of Medicine and offers a bedside learning (BSL) program that allows students to participate in medical services.  Providing medical students with a requisite understanding of pharmacotherapy in order to effectively provide medical services is the goal of the core curriculum of medical education and HF use in BSL may be effective in achieving this goal.  We conducted a survey in order to examine the usefulness of an HF for medical students during clinical training and to determine what drug information is required by students.
Methods: Between April 2012 and March 2013, a questionnaire survey was conducted on 88 fifth-year medical students    who participated in a 1-day BSL program using an HF.
Results: The response rate was 100%.  All students responded that they understood how to use the HF and believed it was useful in BSL.  However, the level of satisfaction with the explanatory notes was significantly lower than that of other sections providing clinically useful additional information such as monographs or supplementary tables (p<0.05).  More than 80% of the students considered monographs to be useful for obtaining information on side effects, warnings and contraindications, dosage and administration, indications, dosing in renal impairment, and drug name.  Students generally considered supplementary tables useful for obtaining information on serious side effects and their early identification, points of drug use in renal dysfunction, appropriate drug use in cancer chemotherapy, insulin and diabetes treatment, calculations of pediatric dosing, and a list of clinically used abbreviations.
Conclusion: These results suggest that medical students believe an HF is useful in BSL.  When medical students participate in pharmacotherapy during BSL programs outside the Pharmacy Division, an HF that not only lists drugs but also contains supplementary tables of clinically useful information may be required.

  A 86-year-old woman visited us, complaining about sharp abdominal pain she had very morning when she got up. Ultrasound and computer tomography scans of the abdomen revealed notable parietal hypertrophy and swelling of the gallbladder. The old woman was diagnosed with acute cholecystitis and immediately admitted to the hospital. Her condition did not improve on conservative management. Percutaneous transhepatic gallbladder drainage (PTGBD) was performed. The bile thus aspirated was bloody, which led us to suspect necrotizing cholecystitis. Emergency cholecystectomy was done. The abdominal operation found the gallbladder wandering with a torsion of 360 degrees around the gallbladder neck as the axis and the leakage of bile in the abdominal cavity from what could be presumed to be the area where the PTGBD was placed. After the torsion was corrected, the gallbladder was surgically removed. Neither gallstones nor tumors were found in it. There were signs of hemorrhagic necrosis in the mucus membrane. The patient made good progress after the operation and was discharged on the 15th hospital day. Torsion of the gallbladder is a comparatively rare entity and its symptoms are not always specific. Therefore, it defies preoperative diagnosis. In this paper, we report our experience with a case of this disease which presented characteristic radiographic images and discuss the treatment strategies including PTGBD.

Introduction: Research was carried out using a mixed method approach in order to evaluate the educational effects of medical students' visit of an elderly home.Methods: Focus group interviews were conducted with 5 medical students and 5 elderlies. All interviewees had experienced the visitation program more than three times. Self-administrative questionnaires were built based on the results of the focus group interview. The questionnaire was then distributed to medical students and elderlies who participated in the program.Results: A total of 84 medical students and 30 elderlies provided informed consent to participate in the study and returned the questionnaire. Nearly 70 percent of the students answered that they had gotten to know about the life of elderly people and sixty percent of the elderlies answered they had experienced some favorable changes after joining the program. While ninety percent of the elderly were satisfied with the program, only half of the students showed positive comments toward it.Discussion: To help all students participate in this program more actively, more organized planning is necessary so that students can have more chances to build communication skills and clarify their own objectives when visiting the elderly.