Assessment of the Use of "Medicine-Pocketbook" at the Pharmacy of the Medical and Dental Clinic of the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido and its Effectiveness in Risk Management

We investigated patient use of the “Medicine-Pocketbook” at the Medical and Dental Clinic of the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido. An estimated 30% of our patients used Medicine-Pocketbooks, and 47% of these patients presented them to the pharmacy. In addition, 47% of the Medicine-Pocketbooks contained drug information coming from other medical institutions and pharmacies within the past six months. Although the use of the Medicine-Pocketbooks was still not widespread enough, our findings showed that they were being used effectively. We conducted several questionnaire surveys on the use of Medicine-Pocketbooks and received responses from a total of 298 patients, which we analyzed. The results showed that most of the patients did not know how to use the Medicine-Pocketbooks correctly. In view of this, over a period of two months we distributed leaflets on the correct use of Medicine-Pocketbooks to patients. This resulted in increasing the number of patients carrying Medicine-Pocketbooks to 40% and the number of these patients presenting them to pharmacies to 59%. Further, on examining Medicine-Pocketbooks, we noted several duplicated prescriptions and unfavorable drug interactions. From this study, we observed that Medicine-Pocketbooks play an important role in the risk management of drug therapy at the pharmacy and that instructing patients on the correct use of Medicine-Pocketbooks can decrease the risks involved in drug therapy.