Objectives: Although the usefulness of pharmacist involvement in screening for preoperative withdrawal medications has been widely reported, specific aspects of the usefulness of pharmacist involvement have not been demonstrated. We evaluated the usefulness of pharmacists in terms of intervention rates for preoperative medication withdrawal ordering and economic loss due to surgical postponements at the inpatient and outpatient support center (Patient Flow Management: PFM) of Ogaki Municipal Hospital.

Methods: The records of 907 surgical patients who underwent pharmacist interviews at PFM were examined retrospectively for intervention type, rates of interventions for preoperative medication withdrawal ordering by factors, and economic loss due to surgical postponements.

Results: Interventions related to withdrawal ordering were performed for 22.4% (48/214 medications), with an adoption rate of 60.4% (29/48). The intervention rate (number of interventions/number of drugs) by drug class was 39.0% (16/41, P = 0.007) for other antiplatelet agents such as prostaglandin I2 derivatives and 66.7% (6/9, P = 0.005) for selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERM). The intervention rates by other factors did not show any difference. The economic loss due to surgery postponement in the absence of pharmacist intervention was estimated to be 2,226,260 points.

Conclusion: Pharmacist intervention in the screening of preoperative medication withdrawal was shown to prevent surgery postponement after hospitalization and avoid economic loss to the hospital. In particular, other antiplatelet agents and SERMs were found to have a high rate of pharmacist intervention due to low awareness of the need for preoperative withdrawal.

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The purpose of this study is to visualize possible factors in healthcare incidents by analyzing the text in incident reports employing the Self-Organizing Map method.
An ordinal method of analyzing incident reports in a hospital is to count the number of factors that are predefined, or to investigate possible factors by focusing on individual cases. Incident reports include text data, which presented the situation under which the incident occurred, although we have yet to utilize these data efficiently. Specifically, the method to analyze large volumes of text documents in medical incident reports has yet to be established.
This study conducted an analysis with 4,505 incident reports obtained from April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021,in Hospital A. We applied the Self-Organizing Map method to the text documents in the reports.
The results showed that the following seven groups were distinguished: medicine (Prescription), medicine (Internal [oral] medicine, Intravenous drip), Self-removal of the stomach tube, Self-removal of the tube for intravenous drip, Blood test, Incomplete consent form, and Medicines remaining in pockets of staff uniform.
Meanwhile, patient falls have not appeared on the Self-Organizing Map despite an increasing number of such incidents.
In conclusion, the Self-Organizing Map method would be effective to determine a new tendency, which may not be extracted with other ordinal analyses. This is considering that the Self-Organizing Map method can categorize similar or dissimilar patterns.
The results of the study suggest that the Self-Organizing Map method is capable of demonstrating objective factors from a significantly large number of incidents.

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Purpose: This study clarifies the effects of how nurses’ awareness of others and the orientation of empathy affect their communication skills, and examines the communication skills necessary for building relationships between nurses and patients.
Subjects and methods: A survey was conducted using MES, ENDCOREs, and the Other Awareness Scale for nurses of Clinical Ladder II and above who worked at the A prefecture general hospital. A multiple regression analysis was performed using the ENDCOREs subscale as the dependent variable and the Otherness Scale and the MES subscale as the independent variables.
Results: [Internal awareness of others] of the Other Awareness Scale was significant for all subscales of ENDCOREs, and [Perspective acquisition] of MES was significant for {self-contro}, {interpreting ability}, {acceptance of others}, and {relationship adjustment}. showed positive standard partial regression coefficients. On the other hand, [Susceptibility] showed a significant negative standard partial regression coefficient for {Expression} and Readability}.
Conclusion: In order for nurses to be able to communicate skillfully, it became clear that it is important to keep in mind the attitudes of [internal awareness of others] and [Perspective acquisition], and to suppress [Susceptibility]. It was suggested that this is a skill necessary for building human relationships among people.

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Objective: Pre-therapeutic screening is recommended for the prevention of hepatitis B virus (HBV) reactivation in patients requiring chemotherapy and immunosuppressive therapy. There are several safety measures to increase the screening rate, which differ among hospitals. The aim of this study is to clarify the safety measures and their problems in national university hospital in Japan.
Methods: In November 2020, we conducted a questionnaire to 42 national university hospitals in Japan. We investigated the concrete operating procedures and challenges of safety measures to promote HBV screening.
Results: The questionnaires were answered by 41 hospitals, and 35 hospitals (85%) had implemented a range of safety measures to prevent HBV reactivation. As safety measures to promote antigen-antibody testing, "education of physicians” and “prescription appraisal by pharmacists" were implemented in 24 hospitals (69%), and "the alert system on electronic medical records" had been established in 17 hospitals (49%), of which 4 hospitals had included steroids in the drugs subject to alerts. The period of validity for antigen-antibody test was set in 8 hospitals, and the period varied from 6 months to 5 years. It was revealed that the challenges in establishing the alert system included technical difficulties, as well as the difficulty of uniform control in the system due to the variety of diseases, doses and durations covered by the target drugs in the guidelines, and the concern of alert fatigue.
Conclusions: As measures to prevent hepatitis B reactivation, this study found that the education of physicians and the prescription audits by pharmacists are widely practiced, and that when constructing electronic alert system for HBV screening, it should be designed with careful consideration of alert criteria and indications.

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Patients receiving care at home change the place of care depending on their physical and mental condition and social environment. This paper discusses the issues of medication safety for home care patients from the perspective of home care nurses toward the implementation of Medication Reconciliation. An analysis of cases in which there are many medication issues among home nursing patients reveals the current situation in which patients with reduced ability to self-manage their medications are managing information on their medications while visiting multiple outpatient departments, using multiple facility services, and being admitted to and discharged from hospitals. In light of this situation, the following three points were considered when implementing Medication Reconciliation: (1) clarify the target of intervention, (2) select the person to intervene , and (3) evaluate the appropriateness and quality of the intervention. In particular, regarding the appropriateness of intervention (3), it is important to understand the concept of the Balanced Model based on the characteristics of home care patients, and it is necessary to devise ways to ensure that Medication Reconciliation is not implemented in a uniform manner.

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