COMMUNITY PHARMACY PRACTICE IN JAPAN - RESULTS OF A SURVEY

Objective: To survey the present condition of community pharmacies as future sites for pharmacy students' externship in Japan. Method: A que stionnaire consisting of 55 questions was sent to 425 graduates from K obe Gakuin University, School of Pharmacy, who owned or worked in comm unity pharmacies. Results: Of the 85 responders, about half were owner s and half employees of pharmacies. Ninety per cent of pharmacy owners operated three and fewer pharmacies. Fifty per cent of pharmacies onl y dispensed drugs, 32% handled both OTC drugs and dispensing, and 18% handled only OTC drugs. Among the 44 dispensing pharmacies, 16 were on e-to-one type pharmacies, 13 were located in front of the big medical institutions, nine dispensed prescriptions from various medical instit utions and five were hospital-owned pharmacies. Forty-five per cent of pharmacies employed 1-4 part-time pharmacists and 52% employed 1-4 ph armacist assistants. Thirty-one per cent of prescriptions came from in ternal medicine departments and the daily number of prescriptions disp ensed by each pharmacy was in the range 10-99 for 41% of the pharmacie s and 100-199 for 36% of the pharmacies. The average daily number of p rescriptions dispersed by each pharmacist was in the range 30-39 for 2 9% of pharmacies and in the range 20-29 for 22% of pharmacies. Pharmac eutical information was provided at 73% of pharmacies and patients wer e counselled orally on their medication at 80% of pharmacies. Patients ' medication histories were recorded at 88% pharmacies. Only 15% of ph armacies conducted patients' medication counselling at their home, but 34% of pharmacies were planning to start this service. Community phar macists attended very few professional meetings or continuing educatio n programmes and only 20% of them obtained information through compute rs. Forty-seven pharmacists out of the 85 obtained their information f rom medical representatives of pharmaceutical companies and 32 pharmac ists through marketing specialists of wholesalers. Ninety per cent of community pharmacists who responded thought that separation of prescri bing and dispensing functions would progress further in the future and 50% of them thought positively about the future social status of phar macists. Most of our graduates who responded were willing to accept ph armacy students from Kobe Gakuin University as externs at their pharma cies. Conclusion: Despite the low response rate, our survey suggests t hat community pharmacy in Japan requires substantial improvement. This is to ensure that pharmacists working in that sector can provide the quality information that is required for the optimum management of pat ients and that the environment is suitable for pharmacy externships.