Abstract
The purpose of this study was to clarify the subconsciousness of hospital pharmacists regarding them practicing drip infusion or blood drawing for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM), etc. We conducted a mail-in survey targeting 476 randomly-selected hospital pharmacists. In our survey sheet we presented our “hypothetical condition” i.e., “that medical practices such as drip infusion or blood drawing for TDM by hospital pharmacists be legally allowed” and we asked them 23 items about the pros and cons of this hypothetical condition and its influence on medical practice. Then, using factor analysis, we searched for the subconsciousness of hospital pharmacists from their answers to the 23 items. We then analyzed the causal association between the factors extracted from the survey and the pros and cons of the “hypothetical condition” using logistic regression analysis. 47.7% of respondents agreed to the “hypothetical condition”. The results of this research provided 5 factors, consisting of “expectation of medical care and society”, “temperament of pharmacists”, “pharmacotherapy”, “employment”, and “medical team”. We understood from the result of logistic regression analysis that hospital pharmacists subconsciously had two kinds of expectation, i.e., expectation about medical care and society, and about qualitative improvement of pharmacotherapy, as their background when they decided to agree to themselves practicing drip infusion or blood drawing for TDM, etc.
