Abstract
Pharmacists counsel patients on chemotherapy at the Outpatient Chemotherapy Center of Hokkaido University Hospital which opened in September 2004.However,a lack of detailed information on patients is sometimes an obstacle to counseling patients and conducting effective pharmaceutical management.Since pharmacists who have taken care of patients in wards have much useful information on patients,we developed a software tool for information sharing between wards and the chemotherapy center.In doing this,we first conducted a questionnaire survey and from the results,selected nine types of information which would be useful in counseling patients and pharmaceutical management in the chemotherapy center.We then developed the software tool giving access to a database of patient information collected by ward pharmacists and used this to prepare information sheets.Patient chemotherapy history,time of appearance of adverse effects and preventive treatment for adverse effects were selected as the most useful items of pharmaceutical information.Following the introduction of the software tool,pharmacists in the chemotherapy center were able to obtain detailed profiles of patients in about half of the time that was required before its introduction.
