It is difficult to say that pharmacist services in the emergency room (ER) are widespread nationwide. According to a survey of certified emergency pharmacists, the work area they are most commonly engaged in is the intensive care unit. This may be due to the lack of reimbursement for pharmacist services in ERs and the absence of operational guidelines. On the other hand, Sapporo Higashi Tokushukai Hospital has had ER specialized pharmacists (ESPs) since 2016 and has reported on the usefulness of pharmacist services in the ER at conferences and in papers. Among other things, it has been shown that the workload of emergency physicians is reduced by 1.9 h/d through the use of ESPs, and that also contributes to the increase in accurate diagnoses of drug-induced diseases and the treatment of infectious diseases. Reports on the benefits of ESP have also begun to emerge in Japan, including a significant decrease in the number of incident reports. Meanwhile, overseas reports indicate that ESPs have a significant impact on healthcare economics, such as “an annualized cost avoidance effect of more than 400 million yen.” Furthermore, reports of improvements in operational guidelines and patient outcomes that support these guidelines indicate that ESPs in other countries are well-established ahead of their counterparts in Japan. We strongly hope that ESPs will increase in number and distribution in Japan in the future through the evaluation of reimbursement and formulation of operational guidelines.

Toxicology based on a deductive approach is called “deductive toxicology,” which attempts to explain clinical and pathological findings by collecting all scientific information about the chemical substance under study and relating them to the essence of toxicity. We have introduced the method of signal toxicology into the deductive toxicology of metal and have shown that signal toxicity exists in heavy metals. Based on the results, we have proposed a new research strategy called “bioorganometallics,” in which organic–inorganic hybrid molecules are used as molecular probes to analyze biological systems. This review outlines our research that has evolved from “deductive toxicology” to “bioorganometallics.”

The duration of undergraduate study was extended in 2006 to six years for pharmaceutical education aimed at training highly qualified pharmacists. Clinical internship in current pharmaceutical education is positioned as being important for fostering the qualities required of a pharmacist, and the support of faculty members is essential. Based on the above, we thought that support from faculty members should be provided easily and positively, which would enrich community pharmacy clinical internships. This study aimed to examine the method of predicting the need for support from weekly reports of community pharmacy practice trainees at Showa Pharmaceutical University. It became evident that the level of necessary support could not be predicted by using the support needs listed. However, application of deep learning to the contents of the weekly report for the first to fifth weeks in 2019 enabled the prediction of the level of support needed in 2020 with 97% accuracy. Although this research is currently limited to predicting the level of support required for community pharmacy practical internship at our university, it demonstrates the use of deep learning to predict the level of support needed based on five weeks’ worth of weekly reports.

We created a one-minute video titled “a simple method of eye-drop instillation” (video) for online instillation guidance, to compare the instillation method before and after study participants watch the video and verify the usefulness of watching the video. Moreover, we prepared a document questionnaire to investigate instillation habits and clarify instillation behavior. Study participants were randomly recruited from among students and faculty members via a poster posted at Tokushima Bunri University. The instillation behavior of the study participants was videotaped before and after they watched the video created by the authors. The images were played in a super slow motion, to confirm success or failure in instillation, drop sites, and eye-opening method. Of the 109 participants in the study, the successful instillation rate before and after watching the video was 55.0% and 69.7%, respectively. The use rate of wet wipes for finger disinfection before instillation increased from 0.0% before watching the video to 74.3% after watching the video. After watching the video, the blinking rate after instillation decreased from 95.4 to 45.0%, the rate of pressing the nasolacrimal duct increased from 2.8 to 77.1%, and the rate of wiping the drug solution spilled around the eyes increased from 89.9 to 98.2%. According to the questionnaire, 72.5% of the participants instilled one drop, 22.0% instilled two drops, and 5.5% instilled three drops or more. Watching the video significantly increased the successful instillation rate and improved instillation behavior. Thus, the video created by the authors can be used for online instillation guidance.

Barley tea (Mugicha), commonly consumed in Japan and other East Asian countries, is prepared by decocting roasted barley (Hordeum vulgare) seed with hot or cold water. Although barley tea is commonly consumed, studies on its health benefits are limited, especially regarding its bioactivity against thrombosis. During the evaluation of functional foods and drinks, barley tea extract was found to exhibit potential fibrinolysis-enhancing activity induced by urokinase. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore the application of barley tea as a functional food and conduct a preliminary investigation to reveal the effects of barley tea on thrombosis. Hot water extract of roasted barley was treated with pancreatin and separated via various techniques using macroporous resin and silica gel and tangential flow filtration with an ultra-filtration membrane. The low-molecular-weight fraction of the roasted barley tea extract was found to possess activity. We further purified the extract and found that the activity of each fraction decreased. Thus, the different fractions of the roasted barley extract may not exhibit the activity individually, instead additive or synergistic effects of multiple components may occur. The results suggest the potential use of barley extract as a functional food to prevent thrombosis.

To improve medication education for patients with hearing loss, pharmacists must better understand hearing loss and provide and collect medication information based on patients’ health literacy and communication abilities. However, no systematic educational e-learning systems for hearing loss are currently available. Therefore, an e-learning system based on instructional design, microlearning principles, and multimedia teaching materials was developed. The e-learning system used Moodle, an open-source e-learning system, and included two courses: one for self-directed learning by watching videos and answering quizzes, and another for evaluating medication education after learning. A study was conducted on 84 pharmacists and 36 pharmacy students who took the learning course to investigate the factors that hinder their understanding and progress of self-directed learning. Although they fully understood the content by watching videos, students with no experience in medication education required an explanation to understand how to communicate with patients. As the learning course was self-directed and related to communication lectures, all students completed it; however, the completion rate for pharmacists was approximately 50%. The following factors could have slowed pharmacists’ e-learning progress: difficulty accessing the learning course through system login and long-duration content, such as answers to free descriptions. This survey found that this e-learning method can be used for self-directed learning about medication education for patients with hearing loss. Further improvement of the e-learning system is necessary so that recognizing the need to understand hearing loss and take appropriate actions for patients with hearing loss in medication education can lead to self-directed learning among pharmacists.

This study aimed to clarify diverse values toward career visions for hospital pharmacists. A self-administered online questionnaire survey was delivered to live and on-demand release attendees at a symposium about sustainable career paths for pharmacists at the 32nd annual meeting of the Japanese Society of Pharmaceutical Health Care and Sciences between September 23rd and November 14th, 2022. Correspondence analyses of text mining were conducted to assess the association between the participants’ perspectives on career visions and their backgrounds consisting of sex and generation. The recovery rate was 81.9% (136/166). The majority of respondents were women (61.4%), aged ≥40 years (66.1%). Correspondence analysis of career vision for pharmacists showed that respondents who were ≥20–30 years were associated with the research topic, whereas those who were ≥40 years were associated with the director of a pharmacy and worked until retirement age. In contrast, there was no difference in career visions for pharmacists based on sex. The median satisfaction score of the symposium was 6 [interquartile range (IQR): 5–6] in the entire population, as conveyed using a seven-point Likert scale. Interestingly, the median satisfaction scores of the symposium were significantly higher for men in management positions than women in non-management and management positions (p=0.0106 and p=0.0031, respectively). In conclusion, we believe that career support tailored to everyone’s values could enable hospital pharmacists to realize their career visions.