Abstract
The report of the Japan Council for Quality Health Care in 2009 shows that 26.4% of medical incidents were related to medication. In Japan, not pharmacists but ward nursing staff are mostly responsible for pharmacy tasks at present, and the involvement of pharmacists in such tasks is expected to improve medical security.
Recently, the concept of ‘skill mix’, meaning bringing together the skills of various healthcare professionals in hospital medical teams, has been attracting attention. In order to clarify the expectations and needs of the professionals involved, we conducted a survey of 175 nurses, 29 pharmacists and 50 doctors. The collection rates of the completed survey from the nurses, pharmacists and doctors were 74.3%, 93.1% and 94% respectively.
Many nurses were concerned about their knowledge of drugs, and they also felt that their performance of pharmacy tasks negatively affected the nursing services they provided. Nurses and doctors hoped that pharmacists could be present in wards and participate in pharmacy tasks. In particular, nurses hoped that they would carry out the mixing of injection drugs, preparation of premixed injection drugs and preparation of oral medicines. They also tended to want pharmacists to carry out pharmacy tasks which required neither close communication with patients nor special knowledge of diseases. However, nurses who worked with pharmacists constantly in the ward wanted them to participate in many kinds of pharmacy task which required close communication with patients.
