People with high health knowledge tend to use information and communication technology (ICT) to obtain, maintain, and promote information necessary for health management. Therefore, experts hypothesize that improving health knowledge will increase the use of online medication guidance via ICT. In this study, we investigated the relationship between health knowledge and willingness to use online medication guidance among Iwaki Health Promotion Project health checkup subjects. The 736 examinees participating in this project in 2022 were surveyed on age, gender, number of people living with them, whether they exercise, drink alcohol, or smoke, whether they use smartphones, whether they use medication registers, their health knowledge score, and whether they take any medications. The presence/absence of desire for online medication guidance (1/0) was used as the objective variable to identify influencing factors. Univariate and multivariate analyses showed that independence was found for four factors: age (OR: 0.975, P<0.001), gender (male) (OR: 1.914, P<0.001), smartphone use (OR: 2.156, P＝0.004) and health knowledge score (OR: 1.405, P<0.001). This study found that health knowledge plays a role in the intention to use online medication guidance. In order to improve health knowledge, it will be necessary to enhance skills to obtain and use high-quality health information and to improve the environment for using ICT-based communication devices.

Most pharmacy students are employed in community pharmacies, making their recruitment a major problem for hospitals. In recent years, there has been a demand to improve the clinical practice skills of pharmacists. Consequently, an increasing number of institutions have introduced hospital pharmacy residencies as post-graduate training programs. In this study, we organized a hospital tour for pharmacy students intending to undertake pharmacy residency and evaluated its effectiveness at encouraging recruitment. The tour was scheduled on a Saturday when there were no classes, and it attracted 10 sixth-year pharmacy students from within and outside the prefecture. The results indicated a high level of satisfaction with the visits. In particular, all students said that the discussions with the residency graduates were very meaningful. However, requests for weekday tours were also made. Many participants stated that their motivation to pursue hospital pharmacy residency was to improve their clinical skills. Eight participants (80%) participated in the recruitment examination. These findings suggest that the introduction of a hospital pharmacy residency program and the organization of face-to-face hospital tours may potentially facilitate the recruitment of hospital pharmacists.