Objective: In conveying and providing drug information, it is essential to ensure correct understanding of such information at clinical practice sites.  We thus used a hospital’s drug information newsletter (DI News) to analyze factors affecting how well the drug safety information provided is understood by recipients.
Methods: Targeting nurses who work at Kushiro Red Cross Hospital, we used the DI News to provide information on changes in insulin preparations, and then implemented Questionnaire Surveys 1 and 2.  An implemented Questionnaire comparison was made among the number of years at work (6 groups), between wards of internal medicine and surgical departments (2 groups), and among various wards (12 groups), and the factors affecting the degree of understanding of information were analyzed.
Results: Compared with Survey 1, the degree of understanding improved dramatically in all groups in Survey 2.  However, no significant differences were seen among the groups in the comparison based on the number of years at work, or in the comparison between internal medicine and surgical departments.  The comparison among various hospital wards, however, showed large differences in the scores for Surveys 1 and 2, with significant differences among the groups being documented (p<0.001).
Discussion: In providing important pharmaceutical information, it was deemed necessary to gain a deeper understanding of the differences among various wards and to offer individual assistance tailored to each ward.  This study revealed the importance of meticulous, personalized information services provided by ward pharmacists.