It is very important for pharmacists to prevent not only the risk of in-hospital drug related accidents in which the pharmacist is directly concerned, but also drug-related accidents. In particular, pharmacists must sufficiently recognize the intention of a physician's hypnotic prescription to prevent drug-induced stumbling or falling accidents. A questionnaire, including the approach for hypnotic prescriptions was carried out by the doctors of Okayama University Hospital. As a result, it is clear that physicians prescribe hypnotics, when patients complain of sleep disturbance, based on the efficacy of the drug and drug effective period, but not based on the side effects. Namely, it is conceivable that as physicians do not select hypnotics regarding their side effects (including stumbling or falling accidents) in situations in which multiple answers were possible, they did not take this problem seriously. Prescription changes were almost always based on the effect or the drug effective period. However, there are some cases in which prescription changes must be carried out, since falling accidents can occur, and pharmacists must become better informed to prevent falling accidents in the future. The physician does not always understand the pharmacodynamics of hypnotics in cases of combined use with other drugs. In addition, it is important to understand the drug effective period from the viewpoint of half-life (t 1/2) in blood concentration, knowing the patient's ingestion condition, including drug interaction. Only pharmacists who carry out patient medication counseling can review the proper use of hypnotics. Pharmacists therefore need to make greater efforts to collect information on risk management from the U.S.A. and other foreign countries, and pharmacists must recommend proper prescriptions to doctors whenever it is deemed appropriate. Namely, prescriptions must be made with increased attention paid to both the side effects and efficacy of a given drugs. In addition, information must be given to nurses regarding the efficacy and side effects of hypnotics when patients are administered a new drug.
