2019 Volume 45 Issue 2 Pages 97-105
The family pharmacist system was established in 2016. Although community pharmacists are required to comprehensively manage patients' medication, they sometimes find it difficult to understand each patient's information in detail. From June 2016, we started providing pharmaceutical summaries about each patient to community pharmacies, which included information about the following items: newly started and discontinued drugs, any adverse effects and drug allergies, any warnings about the patient's medication, and the patient's medication history during their hospitalization. Each summary was taken to the relevant community pharmacy by the patient after discharge. In this study, we conducted a survey of community pharmacies in December 2016. We sent a questionnaire about pharmaceutical summaries to community pharmacies, and the response rate was 63.3％ (57/90). As a result, 100％ of pharmacies that did not receive a summary answered, “The summaries will act as references for pharmaceutical management”, and 96％ of pharmacies that did receive summaries answered, “The summaries have helped with pharmaceutical management”. Forty-eight percent of pharmacies that did not receive a summary answered, “The summaries will provide community pharmacists with the chance to become family pharmacists”. However, only 27％ of pharmacies that did receive summaries answered, “The summaries provided community pharmacists with the chance to become family pharmacists”. This suggests that the summaries helped community pharmacists to understand patients' information. Although such pharmaceutical summaries have the potential to facilitate the development of the family pharmacist system, we have to provide them more efficiently.
