Introduction: This study examined the perspectives of quality surveyors employed by the local government regarding the quality evaluation of agencies for visiting nurses.Methods: The participants were six surveyors. We carried out semi-structured interviews concerning the quality of agencies for visiting nurses. We conducted a qualitative analysis and derived several categories inductively.Results: The surveyors found little difference in the quality between for-profit and non-profit agencies for visiting nurses. In addition, they considered the following characteristics to represent good quality agencies: "availability of home-visit nursing 24 hours per day", "information disclosure and maintenance of quality records", and "the nurse manager understands and promotes an integrated community care system".Conclusion: Eleven categories were identified for the qualitative evaluation of agencies for visiting nurses. The present findings may be used useful for maintaining the quality of agencies for visiting nurses.

Objective: Pharmacotherapy for patients with breast cancer is now administered in an ambulatory setting, and we assume that patients would benefit if clinical pharmacists perform all stages of pharmacological intervention up to prescription in an ambulatory setting as well, especially for medicines requiring chronic administration and those that affect the patient’s life, such as hormonal therapy.  A thorough understanding of guidelines and the clinical reports is paramount for effective pharmacological intervention.  Since ambulatory care clinical pharmacists are involved in the treatment of a large number of patients, effective utilization of evidence outlined in guidelines and clinical reports is difficult.  Therefore, we developed a system for utilizing evidence as outlined in guidelines and clinical reports with a focus on hormonal therapy for patients with breast cancer.
Methods: A database based on the 2013 version of the clinical practice guidelines for breast cancer and clinical reports was constructed using Microsoft® Access 2010.
Result: Clicking on a guideline algorithm according to the disease stage of the patient results in a clinical question being displayed, and the ambulatory care clinical pharmacist is immediately able to determine suitable medications based on clinical reports that are run through the database.
Conclusion: With the use of this database, which includes information required for pharmacological intervention, ambulatory care clinical pharmacists could care for a large number of patients.

Objective: Pharmacists need to know at what positioning a drug is recommended in clinical practice guidelines when they make prescription proposals.  However, the format of guidelines and the definition of recommendation grades differ between academic societies, making it difficult to comprehensively extract only the information one needs.  Therefore, we developed a guideline utilization system to support prescription proposals by pharmacists.
Methods: We built a database comprised of clinical practice guidelines on pharmacological therapy for breast cancer and breast cancer-related conditions.  FileMaker®was used in the development of the system.
Result: This system allows the comprehensive extraction of clinical questions and recommendations from multiple guidelines by means of standardized keywords.
Conclusion: This system supports prescription proposals by pharmacists when generating pharmacological therapy protocols or when in discussions with healthcare professionals as information on the positioning of therapeutic agents in different guidelines and recommended drugs is readily available.

Objective: Rapid bone development in growing children causes excessive tension in the lower extremities’ muscles and tendons, leading to reduced flexibility and increased musculoskeletal disorder risk. Further, lack of exercise causes obesity. Therefore, we created a stretching exercise protocol to prevent musculoskeletal disorders in elementary school (middle and upper grades) children during their growth period, when rapid bone development begins.Patients and Methods: We examined the effects on pain, injury, and flexibility. Fifty-three (boys: 34, girls: 19) students in grades 3–5 (ages 9–11) performed the stretching exercises at school thrice a week for one year, and we compared the results before and a year after the intervention.Results: A three-minute stretching exercise routine achieved an intensity of 4.6–4.9 metabolic equivalents (METs; equivalent to brisk walking). Obesity (P=1.000), flexibility problems (inability to bend forward [P=0.754] or squat problems [P=1.000]), bone/joint pain (P=1.000), and injury (P=1.000) did not significantly increase.Conclusion: Stretching exercises during the growth period may help prevent childhood musculoskeletal disorders, obesity, and flexibility loss.

Objective: Chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) can affect a patient’s quality of life and make them resistant to the treatment. We created an electronic patient reported outcome ePRO-linked pharmaceutical management system (PMS) for CINV (CINVePRO) for storing information, such as nausea and vomiting status, food intake, etc., and suggesting the type of anti-nausea medication and dosage changes to the physicians for controlling CINV.Design: At the Gifu University Hospital, the collaborative research institute, inpatients and pharmacists in charge used CINVePRO-PMS, and a questionnaire survey was done to assess the system’s reliability.Methods: The daily entry of data into CINVePRO shows the number and duration of vomiting, degree of nausea, and amount of food consumed and displays a list and graph of these data over time. The PMS enables pharmacists to list the presence or absence of nausea and the number of vomiting for all patients in their charge and record the intervention and display its list.Results: The questionnaire was distributed to 17 inpatients. All patients and pharmacists answered the questionnaire. According to the results of the questionnaire survey of patients, each screen of CINVePRO received a good evaluation that mentioned it was “easy to understand,” “easy to use,” and “especially useful for communicating one’s symptoms.” In addition, the results of a questionnaire survey of the pharmacists revealed that the system was rated as easy to check the patients’ symptoms and practical to use.Conclusion: CINVePRO-PMS was evaluated as a convenient and applicative system. However, linking CINVePRO to the electronic medical record of each hospital is necessary for sharing it among multiple professions.