After we organized a community-based home medical care (HMC) training workshop composed of presentations by welfare and care workers in addition to patients’ family and targeting community pharmacists in collaboration with a regional pharmacy association, we carried out a questionnaire survey to the pharmacists in attendance to take hold on pharmacist’ opinions for the workshop and attitudes for HMC. The participants had a relatively high level of satisfaction regarding the workshop, rating an average of 7.81 out of 10.0. Among the participants, 77.5% had experience of HMC such as visiting pharmacy services at patient’ home, with the most widely practiced activity being “drug administration guidance for patients at home.” However, activities such as “accompany at the time of rounds” and “participation in conferences” were not widely practiced (less than 50% of the most activity) among the participants. Many participants responded that the key factors of HMC were the cooperation system between different professionals and its environmental arrangement. Overall, positive feedback from participants regarding this workshop was reported, through statements such as “I was able to rediscover the need for cooperation in a diverse team with differing job functions” and “the care of patients and their family was important.” We found many opinions that cooperation with other professionals is important in deepening pharmacists’ involvement in HMC, and that this workshop serves as a bridge to establish greater communication between care workers and pharmacists.

The awareness of many residents on generic drugs has increased recently, which is also reflected in their increased consumption. Enlightenment activities for citizens have become an important tool to further promote the use of generic drugs. We performed a questionnaire survey and assessed residents’ consciousness after a lecture on generic drug usage in a people’s forum. We received responses from 105 of the recruited 127 participants. Most questionnaire respondents were from the age group of 70 years and comprised about half of the sample. The respondents having undefined will to the question about use of generic drugs was the most frequent. Only a few participants answered that they hoped getting generic drugs from a pharmacy or hospital. The concerns and future requests for generic drugs were the cost of medicine, validity, safety, and quality. The middle group by which the participants were classified into a positive group, a middle group and a negative group among question on usage and request of generic drugs, in its percentage each age groups, was most. Many respondents answered that generic drug use “should be spread” after the lecture. However, it was identified that the communication between doctor, pharmacist, and the patient on generic drug use is insufficient in the open question. Enlightenment activities for citizens will become necessary because half of the respondents expressed negative opinions on the use of generic drugs.

The significance of lifelong learning is increasing in Japan’s aging society. The purpose of this study is to clarify the factors that affect the participation in lifelong learning of the elderly people in relation to subjective well-being, physical activity/exercise, and social activity. We conducted a questionnaire survey among lifelong learning participants. The contents of the questionnaire items were scored and the influence of the number of years of participation in the lifetime learning was examined using confirmatory factor analysis. There were 207 participants with an average age of 73.2 years old. In terms of health and life, most of the participants answered positively. In terms of coping with stress, many respondents had that coping strategy. Their nutritional intake and exercise habits were good. They had a high rate of health check-ups, were highly interested in disease prevention and paid attention to their health management. From the exploratory factor analysis of the questionnaire results, the five common factors behind lifelong learning participants were “subjective well-being,” “physical activity/exercise,” “subjective view of health,” “nutrition/diet,” and “social activity.” There was a negative relationship between “years of participation in lifelong learning” and “subjective well-being,” and a positive relationship between “physical activity/exercise” and “social activity” of these latent variables. In conclusion, many of the lifelong learning participants were highly conscious of their health, had acquired appropriate habits in terms of exercise and nutrition, and had a high subjective well-being. The elderly’s continuous participation in lifelong learning is beneficial for “physical activity/exercise” and “social activity.”

Although pharmacy students receive professional education regarding dementia, it is the current state that many pharmacy students cannot learn the countermeasures to treat people with dementia. We conducted the “Otani dementia supporter education lecture” which improved a lecture by Caravan Mate targeting pharmacy students, and subjected the students to a questionnaire survey after the lecture. One hundred and forty-nine students participated and there were most percentages of third grades by 40.9%. After attending the lecture, most of the students opined that one can help a patient with dementia by understanding the patients’ feeling. It was the answer obtained by the lecture for the students to ensure that a pharmacist responds to consultations and requests from their family with a dementia patient. The first information that the students additionally wanted to know about dementia pertained to a method for the early detection of dementia. The results of text mining on the correspondence for patient with dementia showed that categories of “dementia patient,” “correspondence,” “understanding the patients’ feeling,” and “tact,” independently had strong mutual relations. Moreover, the results of text mining on the feedbacks obtained for the lecture showed that categories such as “dementia patient,” “When close person and one were,” “A chance was obtained,” and “correspondence” independently had significant mutual relations. Students who participate in this lecture understand that it is necessary to contact with dementia patients appropriately and feel that there is a need to become a presence that can support dementia patients as a pharmacist in the future. Therefore, this lecture was effective in motivation to correspondence to a person with dementia.