1996 Volume 22 Issue 3 Pages 246-255
We have impression that the insurance reimbursement program for handling in-patient care services offered by hospital pharmacists in Japan has been established as an important routine work.
Accrdingly, we felt the need to understand clearly the doctors' requirements regarding clinical pharmacy services offered in Hirosaki University Hospital. We therefore made a survey to assess the doctors' idea for clinical pharmacy services in our hospital because we recognized that they should be smoothly introduced in our hospital. Of 259 questionnaires distributed to doctors in Hirosaki University, usable responese of 65.6 % were returned. Although almost all doctors (85.3%) were unaware of the insurance reimbursement program system in Japan, nearly all of them (99.4%) recognized the necessity of providing medicational instruction concerning drug therapy. Almost all doctors (79.9%) thought that the clinical pharmacy services offered by pharmacists were needed for effective clinical drug therapy whereas 20.1 % of them responded that they were unnecessary. Obtaining information on the adverse effects of drugs and on drug interactions constituted the most important request for the clinical pharmacy services from our hospital doctors. From the results of our survey, it was found that almost all of our hospital doctors had their comprehenision of clinical pharmacy services offered by pharmacists.
