Medication notebooks are useful for preventing prescription duplication and/or drug interactions for patients who are visiting several medical institutions and/or consulting many medical practitioners, and can thus help ensure that medicines are used properly. However, such notebooks will not be useful if doctors are unaware of them or do not know how to use them properly. With this issue in mind, we sent a questionnaire on awareness of medication notebooks, their distribution, utilization and problems to members of Yamagata City Medical Association. Responses were obtained from 222 doctors (recovery rate 42.1%). Approximately 80% of them were familiar with medication notebooks, and more than 50% had actually found them to be useful in preventing prescription duplication and/or drug interactions. More than 30% of the responding doctors recorded information in notebooks such as that concerning diabetes mellitus and blood pressure, while some doctors had never seen a medication notebook. Almost 75% of the respondents considered medication notebooks to be useful, and some doctors themselves provided them to patients. Since medication notebooks help ensure that drugs are used properly and that doctors and pharmacists have the same information on patients, efforts should be made to raise awareness of them, among both patients and doctors.
