[A study of pharmacists' consciousness toward separation of medical practice from pharmaceutical dispensing]

Separation of medical practice from pharmaceutical dispensing had been a system with just the notation without the reality even after Showa era, although its concept was brought into Japan along with European medicine in Meiji era. Since 1970's, its concept has been prevailing gradually, and the so-called separation rate currently has reached to 47 percent. Increasingly keen attention has been paid recently by the public toward medicine in general. Taking into consideration these facts, a questionnaire survey was conducted for dispensing pharmacists in order to find out where pharmacists stand at present. Most of pharmacists (98.3%) answered that they practice patient counseling either by documents or by verbal communication, and that they take patient profiles. They said that patients could enjoy a proper medical treatment (32.9%) as well as a rational prescribing (14.3%). For a question asking what pharmacists should do to promote the separation of medical practice from pharmaceutical dispensing, 40.3% of them answered that they should make progress in their knowledge on drug therapy.