Abstract
The Japanese government and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) are considering a legal amendment that would allow the outsourcing of drug dispensing as an effort to reduce the burden of physical work (dispensing) in order to strengthen interpersonal work by making pharmacists more deeply involved with patients and local residents. If the outsourcing of dispensing is realized, the time required for dispensing will be reduced and interpersonal work can be increased. However, even if the law is revised, if pharmacists do not spend the time they have saved on interpersonal work, it will be useless. Therefore, this study conducted a nationwide Internet survey to determine whether pharmacists are willing to spend the time they have available to strengthen interpersonal work, and analyzed how the outsourcing of dispensing affects pharmacists’ work and the effectiveness of the outsourcing of dispensing. The results showed that more than a majority of the respondents answered “yes” or “somewhat agree” to the pros and cons of outsourcing of dispensing, with the more agreeable group having a higher awareness of involvement in interpersonal work, indicating that it is likely to make a significant contribution to strengthening pharmacists’ interpersonal work. Furthermore, two multiple regression analyses were conducted using “patient services” and “community activities” as the objective variables, and the coefficients of the explanatory variables for “outsourcing of dispensing operations” were positive in both cases. Community activities” had about twice as much influence as “Patient services” from the coefficient ratios. These results suggest that the outsourcing of dispensing services is an effective tool to create opportunities for pharmacists to participate in local social activities.
