Questionnaire Survey about Difficult Dementia Cases for Pharmacy Pharmacists

Abstract

In January 2016 the Comprehensive Strategy to Accelerate Dementia Measures （New Orange Plan） was announced by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. This New Orange Plan expressly states the “improved involvement of pharmacies and pharmacists in the care of dementia,” so that pharmacies and pharmacists are expected to provide appropriate medication counseling to patients with dementia. In this context we conducted a questionnaire survey about difficult dementia cases. Subjects of the questionnaire were 165 pharmacists highly knowledgeable in dementia. More than 90.3％ of the pharmacists had experienced problems when dealing with demented persons, the most frequent of which was the assertion “I have used up all my medicine.” Again, 89.1％ of the pharmacists also responded they were told “I did not receive the prescribed medicine,” indicating the necessity of appropriate measures for these situations.