The Development and Evaluation of the Interprofessional Education Facilitation Program for Health Professionals Using the Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS) Model of Instructional Design.

Background It is important to learn interprofessional education (IPE) facilitation skills to promote interprofessional collaboration in healthcare. Nonetheless, to date, only a handful of IPE facilitation programs have been developed through research. Objective The objective of this study was to create an IPE facilitation program for healthcare professionals who wanted to promote interprofessional collaboration in their organizations based on the tenets of instructional design and evaluate its effectiveness.

[Designing the Annual Meeting and Active Learning System].

　At the 10th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Pharmaceutical Palliative Care and Sciences our theme centered on active learning systems where adult learners engage on their own initiative. Many of the participants were pharmacists active in clinical practices. Regardless of their specialized skill-sets, pharmacists are constantly faced with difficult challenges in their daily work.

[The 10th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Pharmaceutical Palliative Care and Sciences].

　The 10th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Pharmaceutical Palliative Care and Sciences was held at Act City Hamamatsu, Japan, with a total of 2634 participants in attendance. The theme of the meeting was realized through a number of new concepts, such as a debate symposium, information sessions, nurses' workshops, and so on. The results obtained from the participation questionnaire (n=438), which were aggregated up to 1 month following the end of this year's meeting, revealed that 89% of the participants at considered it to have been appealing.

[Trial of interprofessional education for effective IPW].

  To work collaboratively in healthcare practice, health professionals should learn not only the competencies of their own specialties but also those of other professions so as to promote effective interprofessional work (IPW), thus optimizing patient/client outcomes. For this reason interprofessional education (IPE) is urgently needed. Since the establishment of Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education (CAIPE) in 1987, many IPE programs have been developed and implemented worldwide.

[Elucidating obstructive factors for IPW from the pharmacist position in clinical practice].

  In Japan, many health professionals do not seem to have adequate understandings of the competencies and specialties of other professionals. The competencies of pharmacists are especially overlooked because their expected roles have been changing rapidly in recent years and may vary depending on context in various settings. Due to this lack of understanding physicians themselves often perform therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM), and pharmacists sometimes suggest unnecessary prescription proposals to physicians without considering their treatment plans.

[The pharmacist-nurse collaboration for IPW: from nurse's perspective].

  The concept of interprofessional work (IPW) is becoming increasingly important recently and the role of nurses in IPW seems critical. In Japan, the problem of burnout and turnover of nurses has been recognized, and the solution seems embedded in the scheme of IPW, because it appears to improve their job satisfaction and recognition as health professionals. However, many obstacles lie ahead, such as "tribal conflict" between health professionals including between pharmacists and nurses.

[The pharmacist-physician collaboration for IPW: from physician's perspective].

Interprofessional work (IPW) is increasingly important in various settings including primary care, in which the role of pharmacists is particularly important. Many studies have shown that in cases of hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, and metabolic syndrome, physician-pharmacist collaboration can improve medication adherence and help to identify drug-related problems. Some surveys and qualitative studies revealed barriers and key factors for effective physician-pharmacist collaboration, including trustworthiness and role clarification.

[Education of pharmacists to enable a connection between physicians and persons unaware of their mental illness].

  Pharmacists work in places where they often get in contact with people who may have trouble with their illness, patients and patients' family with prescription, and customers who purchase over-the-counter (OTC) drugs and/or daily goods. Pharmacists can also identify excessive or unsuitable use of OTC drugs resulting from a psychiatric disorder. Moreover, they are in a position in which they can also find the normal-dose addictions and fatigued patient's family resulting from their daily patient's care.

[Moral dilemmas of the pharmacist--ways of coping with ethical problems in light of case studies].

Pharmacological education in Japan has focused less on the cultivation of medical care providers than on fostering personnel who could develop and manufacture medical products. Pharmacists who passed the national board were able to take part in providing medical treatment even if they lacked the knowledge or capabilities required in a clinical setting. Given both this educational background and the systematic problem that there was no division of labor in the pharmacological field, and given that they operated in a work environment where there was almost no opportunity for direct contact with patients, pharmacists for many years lacked self-awareness as persons who handle medical products that can affect human lives, and failed to take full account of their role as administrators of these products.