A survey of the death attitude of pharmacy students finished clinical training using the Death Attitude Inventory

<b>Purpose</b>: Pharmacists should play a positive role in palliative care. The pharmacy curriculum should also contain content promoting an appropriate attitude toward death. Hence, this study aims to gather fundamental information that can be used to understand the various death attitudes held by pharmacy students. <b>Methods</b>: We targeted 159 sixth-year students of the School of Pharmacy, Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences, in 2011. They studied "Up-to-date-Palliative-Care" (an elective subject). To investigate their overall perception of death, we used the Death Attitude Inventory (DAI), developed by Hirai and others (2000), and investigated their views of death on the basis of seven factors. We also classified students on the basis of type of death they had experienced, that is, the death of a household, relative, friend, or pet. We compared the scores obtained for each factor and conducted a logistic regression analysis. <b>Results and Conclusion</b>: We analyzed the data from 120 students (valid response rate: 75.5%). Students who had experienced the death of friend, had significantly higher scores on "Life Purpose" and "Death Concern" (<i>p</i><0.05). Students who had experienced the death of household etc., statistical positive correlation with "Death Concern" and statistical negative correlation with "Death Anxiety" were recognized.

Evaluation of progress of the appropriate use of drugs by the safety control manager / 医薬品情報学

[<b>summery</b>]<br>  Our hospital appointed a pharmacist to be safety control manager of drugs.  With the aim of promoting an appropriate use of drugs, the safety control manager of drugs ensures the appropriate storage, the expiration, and the use record with control drugs following the business procedure every month.  These requirements were confirmed at all divisions of hospital, and then the nonconformity was recorded following the procedure.<br>  The largest number of nonconformity were entry on drugs unseal date and an exceeded the cutoff point of inventory.  We couldn’t gain sufficient improvement about an appropriate use of drugs.  The causes of this nonconformity were dispersion of drugs at each division and insufficient inventory control of drugs.  We attempted to gather and to keep drugs into one group.  As a result, the number of nonconformity greatly decreased at all divisions.  The amount of money of stock in hospital was decreased by about 20%.<br>  These results suggested that the confirmation of requirements with business procedure by the safety control manager’s rounds of hospital was extremely helpful method with an appropriate use of drugs.