The Japanese Society of Social Pharmacy decided during the 34th Annual Meeting to work on and provide medication education, based on the assumption that deepening the basic level of understanding of medication will contribute to its dissemination and enlightenment regarding its appropriate use. Although medication education was introduced into junior high schools in FY 2012, considering the importance of teaching elementary school children, our society has held two training workshops for pharmacists to help them teach children about the appropriate use of medication. Offering medication education according to children’s developmental stages can help children with non-serious diseases appropriately use their necessary medication while consulting experts, and also prevents disease aggravation if children can notice side effects in the early stages. This indicates the possibility of children acquiring the ability to protect their own health (self-medication). We are convinced that medication education will serve as basic knowledge for children to understand medical care they receive in the future. Medication education is a task which should be addressed not only by school pharmacists or family pharmacists in the community, but also by all types of pharmacists as educators; thus, we hope that this workshop will be useful support for such pharmacists to provide medication education.

Objective: Pharmacy students are considered to experience various forms of stress during long-term practical training in the 6-year pharmacy education.  This study examined relationships between psychological stress responses and self-efficacy involving 77 subjects who consented to join this study in practical training conducted at Teikyo University Hospital (2010-2011FY).
Methods: This study used the Profile of Mood States (POMS) for evaluating the psychological response, and an assessment form consisted of 20 items including interpersonal relationships, contents of practical training and health/life/stress coping for self-efficacy before, during, and after the training.
Results: In the POMS, only the state of ‘vigor’ showed a significant difference in a comparison among before, during, and after the training; however, no significant change was observed in other mood states.  These results suggested that the students were under mild stress during the training.  Their self-efficacy was increased after the training in all 20 items except “contacting university instructors during the training”.  The results also showed that there was an association between self-efficacy and psychological stress responses.
Conclusions: It is considered important that instructors and pharmacy technicians involved in pharmacy practice should understand the levels of individual stress responses or interpersonal communication skills to utilize them for coaching and maintaining students’ mental health.

We conducted a questionnaire survey involving 270 interns in the year 2011 at the pharmaceutical department of Teikyo University, in order to clarify pre- to post-practical training changes in: 1) the degree of pre-clinical training’s usefulness, 2) desired workplace in the future, 3) degree of satisfaction, 4) confidence degree of practical training, etc. The degree of pre-clinical training’s usefulness exceeded 80% in all training periods. Regarding the desired workplace in the future, a large proportion of students answered that they want to become a pharmacist in a pharmacy or hospital, both before and after their practical training in all training periods. Also, it was estimated that students decide their career with reference to their practical training experience. In terms of the degree of satisfaction with practical training, the proportions of those who answered “Satisfied” or “Somewhat satisfied” were: 95.1% in the 1st, 95.6% in the 2nd, and 86.1% in the 3rd periods. The confidence degree significantly increased after practical training in all periods. Because the confidence degree showed a tendency to be higher before the 3rd period of training compared to the other two periods, it was considered that students’ experience of practical training led to increased confidence degree. Regarding communication abilities, the degrees of before-after confidence degree and pre-clinical training’s usefulness were low, and, hence, it was suggested that pre-clinical training needs to be further improved regarding these areas.

  We require our students in the 4th grade to take an on-site pediatric outpatient clinic course at the Teikyo University Hospital as part of a 4-week on-site training program.  This year, 64 trainees divided into groups of 3 or 4 students took the course between June and August.  In the morning, trainees were asked to conduct clinical interviews with 287 patients’ guardians in the presence of trainers.  This was followed by the observation of consultation and treatment services provided to patients.  In the afternoon, students reported the findings obtained in medical interviews, participated in group discussions, and received supplementary lectures from trainers.  After completing the course, students were asked to fill in a questionnaire.  When asked whether they were satisfied with the course, 62.5% and 37.5% of students said “very satisfied” and “satisfied,” respectively, while 64.1%, 29.7%, and 6.2% of students said the observation of consultation and treatment services was “very good,” “good,” and “cannot say which,” respectively.  About the medical interviews, 64.1% and 34.4% said that it is “very good” and “good” to conduct them, while 1.5% said “cannot say which.”  All students said they could determine the problems faced by guardians regarding drugs in the medical interview.  The on-site pediatric outpatient care course was found to be “very useful” and “useful” by 62.5% and 35.9% of patients, respectively, while 1.6% said “cannot say which.”  In conclusion, most students were greatly satisfied with the medical interview with guardians using a questionnaire and said that it made it possible for them to closely communicate with guardians.  This result was thought to be attributable to the use of the techniques of the medical interview OSCE which the students learned prior to conducing medical interviews with guardians.

Objective: In this study, we evaluated to examine the short-term educational effects for drug abuse prevention, including lectures and students’ awareness of drug abuse.
Method: A questionnaire consisting of eleven items and SD method-based image survey were conducted three times, prior to and following the lectures and after the summer vacation for first-year students of the Department of Pharmacy.
Results: The numbers of responses to the questionnaire surveys conducted prior to and following the summer vacation were 323 (response rate: 95.8%) and 332 (response rate: 97.9%), respectively.  When asked: “Do you think that people should be allowed to use cannabis (illegal herbal drugs) as long as they do not cause any trouble to others”, 2.8 (3.4) and 6.9 (6.6)% of students answered “Yes” after the lectures prior to the summer vacation and following it, respectively; there were both increased.  Following the summer vacation, 28.6% of students answered “Yes” to the question: “Have you ever seen or heard of people using cannabis or illegal herbal drugs ?”  A total of 2.1% of students had been “solicited to use cannabis or illegal herbal drugs”, and all of them stated that it would be “easy to obtain illegal herbal drugs”.  As the reason for drug abuse by young people, 140 students (42.2%) cited “curiosity”, and 81.6%, or 271 students, stated that they would “refuse” to use any illegal drugs even if they were asked to do so.  The results of the SD method-based image survey suggested significant changes in students’ awareness of drug abuse during the summer vacation; they had the image of little risk on drug abuse prevention following the vacation.
Conclusion: The effects of learning were not maintained in some first-year students because they faced a variety of temptations during the short summer vacation and their normative consciousness and images of drug abuse easily changed.  Therefore, it is necessary to provide lectures for new students to help them acquire accurate knowledge of drug abuse, enhance their normative consciousness, and increase their self-awareness as health care professionals, develop curriculums on a continuing basis, and deploy specialists so that students with psychological problems as identified by the survey, including stress, escapism, mental weakness, and anxiety, can consult them.

Objective: Caffeine may cause dependence and sleep disturbance, and interact with psychotropic drugs.　Therefore, the caffeine intake of patients with mental disorders should be monitored.　However, in Japan, there is no report on the effects of caffeine in mental disease patients or on their caffeine intake.　Therefore, we conducted a questionnaire survey to clarify the perception of caffeine for psychiatric outpatients.Methods: We conducted an anonymous survey on caffeine recognition for outpatients at 8 medical institutions that advocate psychiatry.Results: We collected questionnaires from 180 people.　The knowledge of foods containing caffeine tended to be high in those who had a positive attitude toward caffeine.　More than 90% of those surveyed knew that coffee contains caffeine, but cocoa and jasmine tea were recognized by less than 25%.　Of those surveyed, 39.4% consumed caffeine‐containing beverages at night.　In addition, the rate of consumption of caffeine‐containing beverages tended to be higher at night because they had a positive attitude toward caffeine.Conclusion: The knowledge and intake situation of caffeine by patients with mental disorders differed depending on their interests and way of thinking about caffeine.　As caffeine intake may influence psychiatric treatment, correct knowledge regarding caffeine is important.