Clinical aromatherapy is performed for the purpose of improving patients’ self-healing power and comfort by bringing symptom relief and QOL improvement through the psychological and pharmacological effects of essential oils and the physiological effects of touch by aromatherapy massage. Aromatherapy massage has been practiced in chronic diseases including cancer, care of the elderly, psychosomatic medicine, psychiatry, rehabilitation, obstetrics and gynecology, dermatology, ICU, etc., and research to verify the effectiveness is underway. In the future, clinical aromatherapy will be introduced into the nursing field as comfort care, which is expected to improve the quality of patient care.

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of aromatherapeutic massage on young women. The subjects were treated below the knees by a sweet almond oil and by the career oil containing a black pepper oil, respectively. Skin temperature of the calf and the toes were measured using an infrared camera before and after treatment. The leg skin temperature of the calf elevated significantly after treating with the black pepper oil in 20 minutes as compared with the control. Improvement on feelings and dissolution on swelling and/or fatigue sensations were also observed as the result of treatment with the black pepper oil.

Healthcare professionals sometimes encounter problems in medical and long-term care settings that are difficult to handle using only standard treatments and medications. We believe that patients’ quality of life can be improved by incorporating aromatherapy in the care provided in such situations. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners must approach aromatherapy both effectively and scientifically. To ensure that essential oils are used safely in team-based healthcare provision, pharmacists can help improve the quality of medical care by keeping healthcare professionals reasonably informed on how essential oils are managed and applied in practice. In this study, we introduced a variety of use cases for essential oils in managing real-world problems encountered in healthcare settings. We included a variety of cases in which aromatherapy could be used, such as those involving elderly patients, as well as those in palliative and end-of-life care settings. Issues experienced by family and staff members as they assisted patients are addressed.

Panel screening test standard odors are commercially available. The standard odors used are dissolved in a non-volatile solvent and their concentrations are adjusted. In order to check the performance of the gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer with sniffing port using solid　phase microextraction (hereafter, abbreviated as GC-MS-O), we considered using the five panel screening test standard odors. As a result of the experiment, it was considered possible to check the performance of GC-MS-O using a mixture of 4 standard odors, although it is necessary to further examine the concentration of odorants and reproducibility of the method.