1.Undergraduate Overseas Clinical Training and a Support Organization by Students
Kei TSUMURA ; Tetsuo ARAKAWA ; Junichi YOSHIKAWA ; Rie MUKAI ; Yumi HONDA ; Shiho TAKAOKA
Medical Education 2005;36(1):23-26
Since 1999 all sixth-year students at Osaka City University Medical School have done clinical clerkships at teaching hospitals outside the university. Students can choose overseas or domestic hospitals. By the end of the 2002 academic year 32 students had done clerkships in 7 foreign countries. Arrangements for participating in overseas clerkships differ in many ways from those for domestic clerkships, as students must get information about hospitals and complete application forms in English. Because most medical students feel that making such arrangements is difficult and complex, in 2000 students established a volunteer organization that helps students to study abroad. To make the best use of this organization, Osaka City University Medical School has established several guidelines, including setting standards for students and criteria for choosing overseas hospitals. We report on some problems encountered by our school and on measures for dealing with them and report on the student-managed support organization for overseas clinical clerkships.
2.Verification of the Effectiveness of the Health Support Pharmacy “Toyonaka Model,” an Industry-Government-Academia Collaboration Project Aiming to Promote Community Health through the Information from Community Pharmacies via Digital Signages
Tamaki SAWADA ; Kazuyuki NIKI ; Nichika ONISHI ; Kozo TADA ; Akiyo NISHIDA ; Koji DOHI ; Takashi KOZAI ; Yaeko OKUDA ; Yukiji MORIKAWA ; Takehiko MAE ; Mitsuyo KUROKI ; Yumi TAKAOKA ; Taro MATSUOKA ; Yasuhiro ASHIDA ; Kenji IKEDA ; Mikiko UEDA
Japanese Journal of Social Pharmacy 2022;41(2):175-186
Advances in information and communication technology (ICT)-especially, the spread of social networking services (SNSs)-have facilitated the dissemination of information and an explosion of health information lacking scientific evidence. Therefore, we believe that community pharmacies are the most suitable bases for distributing health information. In 2019, we launched the health support pharmacy “Toyonaka Model” in collaboration with the pharmaceutical association, municipal government, and university. Touch-panel digital signage (DS) was used for real-time distribution of ever-changing information and a rapid grasp of pharmacy users’ responses to various types of information. Between September 2019 and August 2021, one DS was installed in a pharmacy in each of Toyonaka City’s seven areas along with 14 questions on the usefulness of the delivered information. Respondents answered the 14 questions by a tablet or questionnaire; touch logs for DS were collected. When a pharmacy user consulted with a pharmacist about information delivered via DS, the contents were recorded and described by the pharmacist on a 4-point scale (e.g., “inquiry only,” “went through to execution”). From the 850 completed questionnaires and 61,565 touches, 88.7% of the respondents indicated that the information was useful, and 90.0% expressed interest in receiving more health information in the future. Thus, health information provided by DS may be useful to pharmacy users, as demonstrated by 113 cases in which the pharmacist was consulted regarding such information. In 62 of these cases, there were indications that the DS information might have influenced users’ behavior and intended actions.