Objective: To clarify the barriers pharmacists face in handling patients with adverse drug events at community pharmacies and to propose solutions.
Design: Cross-sectional study.
Methods: One hundred-twenty-one pharmacists, who worked and experienced to work at community pharmacies (76.0%), hospitals (22.3%), or elsewhere, participated in this study.  All of them were divided into 12 groups and asked to note the barriers, and abstract and structure them through discussion in each group according to the KJ-method.  On the other hand, workers at community pharmacies including people with experience were also asked to fill out a prepared questionnaire on barriers.
Results: Six groups structured the barriers from the perspective of professional flow as pharmacists and the other groups structured them from the perspective of a medical care team.  The barriers emerging from both structures were (a) difficulty in identifying adverse drug reaction and assessing its grade at community pharmacies, (b) lack of standardized protocols for informing physicians from community pharmacies, (c) not being informed about a physician’s assessment of suspicious adverse drug reactions, and (d) difficulty in explaining adverse events to patients and their families.  Those barriers were reported by a high percentage of respondents to the questionnaire.
Conclusion: The barriers are all crucial in order to avoid health damage caused by medication at community pharmacies and should be urgently solved.