A “Okusuri-techo,” which refers to a prescription record, is utilized in medical institutions as an information tool necessary for the prevention of side effects, drug-interaction, and/or in case of emergency medication. However, the record is not shared sufficiently between patients and pharmacists and thus remains underutilized. To explore how the record could be used more effectively, a survey was conducted with the pharmacists of 73 community pharmacies that were members of the Otaru Pharmaceutical Association, and patients who received prescriptive medicines from these pharmacies. A total of 148 pharmacists and 157 patients responded. Approximately 80.9% of the patient group responded that the prescription record was useful, whereas 100% of the pharmacists answered that it was helpful. In the cross-analysis of the patients’ responses, the presentation of the prescription record to medical staff was correlated with the degree of helpfulness of the record. It was suggested that the function and effective usage of the record were rarely shared between patients and pharmacists. Sufficient understanding of the value and effective usage of such a record will therefore promote its active utilization among patients and pharmacists.

In addition to the notion of promoting generic drugs to lower pharmaceutical costs, another approach that has gained attention as vital to policy reform is that of utilizing health insurance pharmacies to decrease over-prescription and surplus of drugs. Such a move would perforce require separating medical and dispensary practices. There is increased need for more efficient provision of pharmaceuticals, including proper inventory control, outpatient clinics that function as family pharmacies, and support of home-bound patients’ medication regimens. However, chronic ailments in particular tend to lack subjective symptoms, and decreased intake of medication and surplus medication compound to make these larger policy issues difficult to solve. This has led to the Revised Dispensing Service Fee changes in 2012 and 2014 putting stricter controls on medication regimens and checks of surplus medication. This research examines in parallel the issues of patient satisfaction and loyalty alongside adherence to medication regimens, issues that have been previously treated in isolation in the existing literature. By comparing their respective inter-relationships and influencing factors, we conducted a re-analysis of the relationship between insurance pharmacies and patients. We collected data from patients with diabetes and high blood pressure via an Internet survey. Responses on loyalty, patient satisfaction, overall perceived quality, and degree of medication adherence were obtained, as well as responses on the factors believed in a cross-sectional sense across research disciplines to contribute to the above, and the results measured on a quantitative scale. Path analysis was then used, with a model defined using overall perceived quality as a parameter and measuring the degree of satisfaction, loyalty, and medication adherence. In addition, a multiple-group analysis was simultaneously performed. Although there was variance by ailment in terms of patient satisfaction and loyalty, factors contributing to perceived quality were the strongest, followed by the rating of the prescribing doctor. However, for adherence, only self-efficacy and prescribing doctor rating contributed. Ultimately, no correlation was found between patient satisfaction, loyalty, and adherence, and the contributing causes were found to vary, so improving these various vectors would seem to require respectively differing strategies. In terms of medication adherence, the results suggested the need for strategies to increase patients’ self-efficacy, partner with prescribing doctors, and improve the perceived rating of prescribing doctors; different quality improvements are needed by medical area, whether medicine or dispensary practice.

  In scenarios developed by a multidisciplinary faculty for interprofessional education, practical problems that emerged included: “medical incident” and “shortage of medical resources” from the perspective of patient and families,” and “information sharing,” “evaluation and feedback,” and “insufficient feeling of accomplishment” from the perspective of health-care professionals. Discussions identified “interprofessional collaboration,” “mutual understanding for professionalism,” and “embodiment of professional culture” as key words for problem solving. Finally, scenarios were developed in the hospital, home-care, nursing, or community care settings that referred to 2 themes, “end of life” and “dementia.” Pilot case studies performed with health care professionals demonstrated the utility of the scenarios and the effectiveness of interprofessional education.

【Objective】 Nowadays, the pharmacist’s work changed from product-centered to patient-centered care. In this research, we make it clear through patient’s talk what a patient expects of a family pharmacist and a pharmacy. We think it is utilized to construct a communication standard required for family pharmacists. 【Method】 Focus group interviews were conducted with 3 groups of 11 patients who utilize pharmacies, recruited through snowball sampling. Interview data were categorized using qualitative analysis method. 【Results】 As a result of analysis, 7 categories and 43 subcategories were generated. Based on these, a diagram was created representing the relationships between categories. 【Discussion】 The generated categories indicated “factors influencing patient’s relationship with pharmacists” and subcategories indicated “requests to or expectations from pharmacists by patients.” Many of them overlapped with the image of “family pharmacist/pharmacy” depicted in the “Pharmacy Vision for Patients” indicated by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2017. Meanwhile, patients wanted attitude, ethics, and sense of mission as basic qualifications originally required in a medical professional. Moreover, the research showed broader viewpoints and expectations for advanced communication skills such as support of patient’s self-determination of medication, relationship between the patient and the physician, and consideration of social and economic background of the patient.

【Objective】 Nowadays, the pharmacist’s work changed from product-centered to patient-centered care. In this research, we make it clear through patient’s talk what a patient expects of a family pharmacist and a pharmacy. We think it is utilized to construct a communication standard required for family pharmacists. 【Method】 Focus group interviews were conducted with 3 groups of 11 patients who utilize pharmacies, recruited through snowball sampling. Interview data were categorized using qualitative analysis method. 【Results】 As a result of analysis, 7 categories and 43 subcategories were generated. Based on these, a diagram was created representing the relationships between categories. 【Discussion】 The generated categories indicated “factors influencing patient’s relationship with pharmacists” and subcategories indicated “requests to or expectations from pharmacists by patients.” Many of them overlapped with the image of “family pharmacist/pharmacy” depicted in the “Pharmacy Vision for Patients” indicated by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2017. Meanwhile, patients wanted attitude, ethics, and sense of mission as basic qualifications originally required in a medical professional. Moreover, the research showed broader viewpoints and expectations for advanced communication skills such as support of patient’s self-determination of medication, relationship between the patient and the physician, and consideration of social and economic background of the patient.

For this second report, we divided the efforts of the University of Tsukuba into two parts. In the first part, we introduced the Interprofessional program, an inter-university collaborative educational program between the University of Tsukuba and Ibaraki Prefectural University of Health Sciences. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, this program was conducted using TBL (Team-based learning) in a large conference room. After the pandemic, this was conducted online (using Zoom). The main changes due to the online implementation were the following five points; (1) online faculty meetings, (2) advance distribution of materials, (3) testing using Google Forms, (4) group work using the breakout function, and (5) simultaneous editing using Google Docs. In the future, we would like to examine the possibility of new educational methods while creating innovations that are possible only through online interprofessional educational programs.

In the second part of the second report, we introduce the Care Colloquium, an inter-university collaborative educational program between the University of Tsukuba and the Tokyo University of Science. The Care Colloquium is an interprofessional education program that uses PBL (Problem-based learning). In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this program was implemented online using Microsoft Teams, with advance preparation including manual maintenance and communication testing. The same learning outcomes were achieved as the face-to-face implementation. Undergraduate interprofessional education tends to be a large-scale program, and the shortage of faculty and classrooms is challenging, but online education could overcome these obstacles. The development of hybrid programs that use the merits of both face-to-face and online education may lead to the promotion of interprofessional education in the future.

It is difficult to implement interprofessional education (IPE) in the classroom due to COVID-19. To share our knowledge of online IPE, we report on how we provided IPE for first-year students at two universities. At Mie University, a class was implemented to use Zoom. Quizzes and chats promoted interactions between instructors and students. At Hokkaido University of Science, an online team medical experience game was conducted via Zoom and a Learning Management System (LMS). The activity promoted interaction between students through gameplay and clear instructions. In both cases, students could successfully develop online IPE based on existing learning methods. Through their experience, it was clear that students are able to understand other professionals’ roles. They were also to commit to membership and/or teamship. On the other hand, students faced challenges with faculty familiarity and time allocation.