Survey on Situation of Pharmacist Faculties in Japanese Pharmacy Schools

With the introduction of 6-year pharmacy educational program in 2006,a provision was made to assign pharmacist faculties having working experience as pharmacists in pharmacy schools.In October 2007,we conducted a survey to investigate the situation of pharmacist faculties.We sent a questionnaire to 247 pharmacist faculties in 66 pharmacy schools and the response rate was 84.9%.The faculties consisted of professors (43%),associate professors (23%) and lecturers (23%),and 77% of them had a Ph.D.degree.In a typical week,the major activities they engaged in were educational activities (20.6 hrs),research (12.2 hrs) and management (9.6 hrs).While the average time they were occupied by clinical practice was 3.5 hrs,67% of them did not do any.Half of the faculties did not conduct any research with students or graduate students in their own schools,and in 2007 only 55% applied for Grant-in-aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education,Culture,Sports,Science and Technology of Japan.Twenty-six percent said they were very satisfied or satisfied with their work on a five-point scale,and 44% rated their degree of satisfaction as fair.In conclusion,our survey showed that most pharmacy faculties are not sufficiently engaged in clinical practice and do not spend much time in clinical research.We hope that its results will promote discussions among pharmacy personnel concerning the role of pharmacist faculties so that even better clinical pharmacy education may be provided to students in pharmacy schools.