Objectives: Collaboration among medical, nursing, and welfare staff members in a community is needed to promote community-based integrated care in Japan; however, these individuals have few opportunities to communicate. We held a Care Cafe^®, which establishes face-to-face relationships among the staff members in a community, evaluated changes in the extent of community collaboration over time, and tracked the number of times each individual participated. Methods: Participants in the Care Cafe^® were asked to complete a questionnaire measuring the extent of community collaboration among medical, nursing, and welfare staff members at the time of first participation and approximately one to two years later. Responses were evaluated with a 5-point rating scale to reveal the extent of collaboration (total score and six subscale scores), how the participants felt about the collaboration, and the number of staff members in the community who could support them. Results: Thirty-six participants responded, including 12 community pharmacists, 10 care managers, 5 physical therapists, 3 hospital pharmacists, and 6 others. Of them, 22 (61.1%) participated at least three times. The total score and the five subscale scores, the proportion of participants who rated their collaboration as good, and the reported number of staff members who could support them increased significantly from the time of first participation. Thirteen participants (36.1%), each of whom participated at least three times, responded that their participation resulted in practical collaboration. Conclusions: The Care Cafe^® can improve collaboration among medical, nursing, and welfare staff members in a community. More frequent participation may promote collaboration.

This study is aimed to pursue a possible introduction of a unit-of-use packaging for prescription drugs to Japan. The survey of pharmacists’ opinions about a unit-of-use packaging was also carried out. In addition, prescription days found in 77,212 prescriptions were related to daily number of times to take medicine, medicinal effects and medical institutions that issued prescriptions in question. The percentage of prescription days with a multiple of 28 days was 24.6％ and that with 30 days was 18.2％. If the group medical institutions which prescribe mainly for 30 days change the main prescription days from 30 days to 28 days, 42.8% of prescriptions could be dispensed without opening packages for 28 days. In this case, the percentage could be increased in drugs for chronic diseases. According to the survey for pharmacists, 34.6% prefer unit-of-use packaging, 24.8% prefer bulk packaging and 40.5% showed no preference. The reasons for preferring unit-of-use package were “reduction of dispensing time” 94.3% and “prevention of dispensing errors” 73.6%. 90.8% of the pharmacists indicated that various prescription days is the main factor for a limited introduction of unit-of-use package to Japan. It was concluded that the key issues to be considered for acceleration of introduction of unit-of-use packages for prescription drugs in Japan are the following: 1) maximum unification of prescription days to 28 days instead of 30 days, 2) start with drugs for chronic diseases, 3) preparation of 28-day packages, and 4) start with drugs taken once a day.

Objective : It is true that depressive patients receive instruction on the use of the medicines from community pharmacists, but it is unclear whether these patients themselves come in contact with pharmacists depending on the needs for relieving their worries about the therapy. This study aims to reveal what prevents depressive patients from consulting pharmacists in order to help improve the pharmacy environment for the patients. Methods : We addressed an online questionnaire to 1,038 depressive patients, asking “Have you ever consulted pharmacists about 1) medicine, 2) therapy and 3) difficulties in life caused by depression?” and “Have you ever given up consulting pharmacist about the same three items though you want to consult them?” If the answer was “No” for the former question, and if the answer was “Yes” for the latter, the reasons were also asked. Result : Available data from 988 patients were collected. 23.8%, 42.7%, 46.6% patients have not consulted about 1) medicine, 2) therapy and 3) difficulties in life caused by depression, respectively, though they wanted to consult pharmacists. One of the reasons for this was that they had felt refused by pharmacists before. Others were, for example, they didn’t like crowded situation and lack of privacy in pharmacy. Conclusion : This study revealed the existence of patients hesitating to consult with pharmacists. Pharmacists need to recognize that their careful response to the patients could encourage the patients’ recovery, and that they should provide comfortable circumstances for patients to consult pharmacists without hesitation.

China’s pharmaceutical market, the second largest in the world, has recently attracted the attention of many countries. However, Chinese pharmacists’ role in pharmacies and their legal responsibilities in China are not well known in Japan. Clarifying Chinese pharmacists’ legal obligations and identifying their specific roles may contribute to improvements in pharmacy operations in Japan. To investigate the Chinese legal system as it pertains to pharmacists in China, we used China’s official government website. In 2019, there were 516,003 pharmacists in China. As of 2020, the Chinese Pharmacist Act is still in the preparatory stage; however, the Administrative Regulation, which describes the system for licensing pharmacists, has been established. Article 1 of the Administrative Regulation states that Chinese pharmacists are responsible for the quality control of medications, as well as medication consultations. Another regulation, Good Supply Practice, specifies that the lot numbers of medications should be provided to patients at the time of dispensing. We believe that this is particularly beneficial to pharmaceutical traceability. Since 2017, the circulation of counterfeit HARVONI^® combination tablets has been a problem in Japan. To secure and improve the quality of medications in Japan, we believe that it is important for pharmacists to understand that they are “responsible for the quality of the medicine” and to promote discussions on pharmacy quality control tasks.

In awareness-raising activities for medical cost reduction, many drug-related words, including loan words, are used. The use of loan words may reduce the effectiveness of activities to raise awareness among elderly people with difficulty understanding these words. We examined the recognition of drug-related words among the elderly aged 65 or over. The word “generic drugs” had the highest recognition rate, at 94.7%, and those for “general drugs” and “leftover medications” also exceeded 70%. In contrast, the recognition rates for loan words, such as “authorized generics” and “biosimilars”, were markedly low, at 1.5%. The results suggest that the recognition of some words is poor among nonprofessionals, even if they are commonly used by professionals. In activities to raise awareness of medical cost reduction among elderly people, it may be important to use simpler words, and provide more detailed explanations, such as showing actual products.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, community pharmacies provided reliable information to the public as well as masks, disinfectants and drug supplies. This review article first describes the information and support provided to pharmacists and pharmacies by the U.S. CDC, FIP, and Pharmaceutical associations in USA, UK, Canada, and Australia. Lastly, the activities of Kyoto University SPH, which provided information on infection control to community pharmacies in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic.