抄録
Pharmacy education in Japan has been reorganized into a six-year curriculum to provide the clinical education required by pharmacists to actively participate in patient care as drug therapy specialists. Problem-based learning (PBL) is a highly suitable method to educate students regarding diverse clinical issues and in Japan, it has already been recognized as a universal education method in the fields of medicine and nursing. However, the extent to which PBL had been adopted in pharmacy education had not been clear. In order to clarify the present situation and gain information on how to achieve the optimal use of PBL in pharmacy education in the future, we conducted a questionnaire survey.
The questionnaire was sent to deans of pharmacy faculties or presidents of universities of pharmacy (62 institutions) in June 2005 and the recovery rate was 72.6% (45 institutions). It was found that 34% (15 institutions) of them had already adopted PBL in their education programs. It was being used for a wide range of students and encompassed case histories and various other themes and subjects ranging from basic subjects to social medicine, and various tutors and facilitators were involved. As for institutions that had not adopted PBL, 28% (7 institutions) intended to do so soon. Further, 66% (29institutions) of all institutions indicated a desire to adopt PBL in the six-year education curriculum. This tendency was especially remarkable for private institutions.
The results of our survey suggested that PBL is likely to become increasingly widespread in healthcare-oriented pharmacy education as well as in medical education in Japan.
