2019 Volume 45 Issue 6 Pages 301-311
Objective: Depressive patients tend to avoid communication with health care staff even on their own therapies. However, success in the therapy of depression requires that patients should be educated about their medication from pharmacists. Therefore, it's important to build good environments in which the communication with pharmacists is easy for patients. In this study, we research patients' requirements for pharmacies and pharmacists to offer good pharmaceutical care for depression.
Method: Subjects were 988 depressive patients collected through an investigational research company under certain conditions. The data were obtained through a questionnaire on “How much they have experienced consultation with pharmacists”, “how much they recognize the importance of the medical explanation from the pharmacists”, “how much they recognize the importance of the pharmacy's function” and “how much they appreciate the pharmacy's contribution to their medication and health”. The questions were answered using a five or seven point Likert scale.
Result: Sex and educational background affected the experience of the consultation with pharmacists. The patients' recognition score of importance for both the explanation from pharmacists and the contribution of pharmacies to them were 10 - 20％ and 6 - 9％ higher in the group having experience of consultation than the no experience group, respectively.
Conclusion: This result shows that the medication instruction from pharmacists considering the patients' personal information including educational background could satisfy depressive patients and lead them to a deeper understanding of their own medication. From this result, we expect to provide good medication practice for depressive patients.
