[Problems of collaboration between community and hospital pharmacists for cancer chemotherapy and proposed corrective...

We conducted a workshop that aimed to address the problems of collaboration between community and hospital pharmacists to provide safe outpatient chemotherapy and promote continuous collaboration. Thirty-nine pharmacists in Gunma were enrolled in the workshop and divided into five groups. Each group comprised similar number of community and hospital pharmacists in the neighboring area. Participants in these groups discussed using the KJ method and identified the following important and urgent problems; "lack of collaboration between hospitals and pharmacies" and "lack of exchanging patients' information, including regimen". To improve collaboration, the participants recommended a workshop or a study group and setting up a hotline, and to exchange patients' information, they proposed to utilize a medicine notebook and reconfirm how to use these notebook. Furthermore, usage of cloud storage as a means to exchange patients' information was discussed. Post-workshop questionnaire revealed that 97% participants acknowledged an increased awareness toward collaboration, and 90% participants were motivated to take more aggressive action for promoting collaboration; whereas, only 53% participants believed that they could summarize the problems and corrective measures in promoting collaboration. The workshop seemed to be productive in identifying the problems of collaboration and improving the awareness and motivation toward collaboration. However, it served only as a "trigger", and therefore it is important for valuable "results" to continuously collaborate face-to-face between community and hospital pharmacists.