Decreased adherence to medications among the elderly has become a problem in recent years. To overcome this problem, the dispensing of one-dose packages of medicines has been suggested. The purpose of this study was to survey elderly outpatients in a regional hospital at the Tokachi Development and Promotion Bureau and to analyze the factors that influence patients’ preference for a one-dose package medicine. The dispensation of one-dose package medication was observed in 20% of elderly outpatients. A correlation between the percentage of dispensed one-dose package medications and the number of agents was observed. Furthermore, dispensing rates of one-dose package medications increased with aging. Within the various departments analyzed, one-dose packaging rate was high in the Departments of Cardiology and Psychiatry. In this study, the correlation between residential municipalities of outpatients and one-dose package medications was examined. In the municipalities with a high rate of aged individuals and high average of household members, one-dose package medication rate was low. Multivariate logistic regression analysis confirmed these factors as significant. That one-dose packaging rates increased with the number of drugs and aging are consistent with the notion that one-dose package medications are designed to increase drug adherence among the elderly. Interestingly, one-dose package dispensing rate was low in areas with advanced aging. Because aging in Japan is expected to advance in the future, it is important to survey one-dose package dispensations.

In junior high school, educators with many different types of specialty jobs are involved in “education on the proper use of pharmaceutical products” and “drug-abuse resistance education”. Examples of these different jobs are physical education teachers, school nurses, school pharmacists. The aim of this study was to elucidate novel ideas and new directions in the future of medicine instructional education by clarifying the aims and thoughts of educators with different jobs on the education of pharmaceutical medicines and drug use. Based on the technique of Personal Attitude Construct (PAC) analysis, junior high school staff members involved in “education on the proper use of pharmaceutical products” and “drug-abuse resistance education” were interviewed regarding their aims and thoughts. Their responses were analyzed qualitatively. Five school pharmacists, five school nurses, and four physical education teachers were interviewed. The responses revealed that school pharmacists engaged in student education from the specialized perspective of pharmacology, school nurses engaged in student education from the perspective of imminent situations, and physical education teachers engaged in student education more from the perspective of student environment. This study suggested that “education on the proper use of pharmaceutical products” and “drug-abuse resistance education” should be a collaborative effort, so there were the different perspectives and aims of educators with different specialty jobs in the instruction of junior high school students on these subjects.

Consultations with patients who bring drugs, especially on the high risk drug list, to a hospital is an important role of pharmacists. However, many incident reports occur though pharmacists generally make an effort to check such medications. In Japan, incidents are mostly reported just in terms of numbers but not in terms of the prevalence of a target group. We aim to reveal the prevalence of incidents related to medicine brought-in by patients undergoing surgery in National Hospital Organization (NHO) hospitals. For our study, we extracted patients undergoing surgery who were prescribed antidiabetic agents from the Medical data bank (MIA) in NHO. Chart reviews were performed on patients to evaluate the number of incidents in relation to brought-in medicine. The prevalence of incidents of interest was 4.4% (41/931, 95%CL : 3.2-5.9%). Pre-avoidable incidents represented 56.1% (23/41, p<0.0001). We found that pharmacists play a role in making incidents less severe.

An epidemiological study reported that low serum cholesterol is one of the causes of cerebral hemorrhage. Furthermore, differences in the Apoprotein E (ApoE) genotype influence the amount of low density lipoprotein in serum. The value of standardized mortality ratio (SMR) for cerebral hemorrhage or infarction in residents of Kikai island (KI) is higher or lower than 100, respectively. The aim of this educational activity is to assess whether our lectures on “prevention of stroke” ─(1) relationship between cholesterol and stroke, (2) test items involved in cholesterol of serum and role of lipoprotein, (3) relationship between gene and disease, and (4) prevention of disease by diet─were effective for junior high-school students (JHS) in KI. To be improve their understanding of lecture (3), we performed genetic analysis (for ApoE polymorphism) using DNA extracted from their hair roots. Although we also conducted lectures after the results of the analysis, the pretest (40.7%) and posttest (50.0%) indicated that lecture (3) had been difficult for JHS. The total scores for the posttests for second- and third-year JHS (72.5% and 80.3%, respectively) were significantly higher than those for the pretests for second- and third-year JHS (49.6% and 55.9%, respectively). However, for first-year JHS, the total scores for posttests (63.0%) and pretests (61.7%) were not significantly different. Based on these results, we concluded that our lectures facilitated a substantial understanding about the “prevention of stroke” among JHS and were educationally beneficial for second- and third-year JHS, in particular.

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.

Aging society has been progressed in Japan, so that it is projected that one in four is an elderly person and that demands of medical and nursing care show a marked increase in the near future. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) targets to create the Integrated Community Care System (ICCS) in each community to realize every person can live a life with dignity even in the progressive aging society by 2025 when the demands of medical and nursing care will be jumped up caused by the baby boom generation will reach their age of 75. In the ICCS, the function and role of pharmacies/pharmacists are expected to be different from the current ones. Therefore, pharmacies/pharmacists have to find their appropriate function and role in the ICCS, and also have to adapt themselves smoothly to the progressive aging society even though no one in the world has an experience.The MHLW introduced Pharmacy Vision for Patients on October of 2015, and also has established the new pharmacy reimbursement program “Your Pharmacist Reimbursed Program” on April of 2016 as the first step to cope with the progressive aging society at 2025. In this manuscript, I will introduce the new MHLW policies for Pharmacies/pharmacists. And also I will consider the needs for pharmacies/pharmacists and the function and role that they have to fulfill in the ICCS.

We developed a program to generate scenarios of pathological changes for problem-based learning (PBL) in a physical assessment workshop using the patient simulator, "Physiko^®”. With these programs, PBL-style case experiencing also became possible by actually performing physical assessment on “Physiko^®” using a stethoscope while presenting information such as the patient background. The results of a survey conducted during the physical assessment workshop showed that participants were significantly interested in simulation-based education. However, the results also revealed a lack of understanding of technical terms used in physical assessment, suggesting the need to urgently facilitate not only the acquisition of basic skills to monitor vital signs but also that of symptomatology knowledge in order to understand technical terms and pathological characteristics.