抄録
All senior students at our university experienced 2 weeks of practical training at one of 22 hospitals in three prefectures in the Tokai district. We investigated the students' awareness regarding this practical training at a hospital before and after the training.
After practical hospital training, many of the students became aware of the importance of seeing and experiencing the pharmacist's daily practice.
The students often expressed that they wanted to know how to talk to patients, how to teach patients about taking medicine and how to express concerm or associate with other hospital staffs (doctors and nurses), none of which are addressed in the university. Other comments indicated that students wanted to think about the future of pharmacists based on their role and function, or that students wanted to refer to these experiences in deciding which course to follow.
Through questionnaires sent to the students asking if they were interested in becoming pharmacists, we obtained similar distribution of responses before and after the practical hospital training with answers being “Yes”, “No” or “Does not apply”, when the data of all students were collected together. However, their attitudes changed considerably after training when each students was considered individually.
The answer to another question regarding the image of a hospital pharmacist (or the work performance) indicated that students who felt that pharmacists were positively tackling complex affairs were more interested in actual training in the hospital.
Based on these findings we need to further consider ways of improving the content of training over a longer period.
