No abstract

In order to prevent a crisis due to the increasing elderly population in 2025, home medical care should be enforced and promoted. Therefore, pharmacists are expected to play their roles in home medical care. However, pharmacistsʼ involvement in home medical care remains inadequate in Japan. In this study, a nationwide questionnaire survey was conducted on the awareness of visiting nurses about the roles of pharmacists in home medical care, and data were analyzed using the text mining method. A request letter was posted to 47 prefectural branches of the Japanese Nursing Association and 28 prefectural branches of The National Association for Visiting Nurse Service. Only members of these associations who agreed to participate in this survey responded. As a result, a total of 103 visiting nurses completed the questionnaires. "Distribution of medicines to the medication calendar" was one of the main medicine-related jobs performed by visiting nurses during home medical care. The majority of them (95％ of visiting nurses replied "it is necessary") indicated that pharmacistsʼ activity was required for home medical care. According to visiting nurses, the job expected from pharmacists in home medical care was the "centralized unitary management of medicines in collaboration with medical doctors." In summary, our survey results suggest that an active intervention to polypharmacy by pharmacists in collaboration with home medical doctors is important for home medical care.