Survey of Patient Awareness on the Online Medication Instruction

Abstract

With the increasing spread of COVID-19 infection, several aspects of social life are shifting to online resources to avoid contact between people. Regarding movement related to pharmacists, online medication instruction was facilitated nationwide from September 2020 because of the revised Pharmaceutical Machinery Law. Therefore, we conducted a survey to clarify the views of patients regarding online medication instruction. The results indicated that awareness regarding the patients’ online medication instruction was as low as 10%. However, approximately 100% of the patients answered that they needed the online medication instruction. Further, we inferred that the reason for this selection involved an emphasis on time burden. However, the results clarified that the time constraint from the consultation to the receipt of medicines was a disadvantage with online medication instruction. Therefore, it is necessary to consider measures that retain the advantages and address the disadvantages of this system.