Abstract
Up till now, the major drug information-related activity of hospital pharmacists has been to disseminate drug safety information issued by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. However, another important activity of pharmacists is noting adverse drug reactions (ADR) occurring in their own hospital and informing other medical staff about them. This information should also be reported to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare so that the adverse reactions may be widely known among the medical community. In order to investigate the extent that pharmacists actually conduct such activities, a questionnaire survey was sent to 62 national hospitals and the number of ADR reports to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare from 189 national hospitals in fiscal 2003 was investigated. The results indicated that most hospitals were insufficiently aware of the ADRs that occurred. A major reason for this was considered to be the lack of systems for collecting and reporting adverse reactions. Pharmacists were found to be involved in 78% of ADR reports. For the National Cardiovascular Center, the survey showed that the introduction of an ADR collecting system in which pharmacists played a leading role had significantly increased the number of ADR reports to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Moreover, 3% of the reported ADRs were related to safety information from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The survey results also suggested that providing safety information to physicians is effective in improving safety in the use of drugs. Although medical staff were only aware of about 3% of the ADRs, the crucial role of pharmacists in collecting and reporting ADRs was recognized.
