RESUMO
To promote the stockpiling of regular medicines for disasters (SMD), we investigated SMD rates and clarified the relationship between SMD status (Yes or No) and the characteristics of patients with chronic diseases. A survey was provided to patients visiting the pharmacies in Hokkaido. SMD was defined as a patient having a supply of regular medicine for 7 days or more and replacing with new medicine within one year. Of a total of 537 participants (51.0% male; mean age 65.8 years), 61.1% had experienced a major disaster. The SMD rate was extremely low at 15.3%. The median score for a patient’s understanding of the regular medicine names (5-point scale: 1＝hardly understood, 5＝almost understood) was 2. The median number of monthly pharmacy visits was 0.8. 5.4% were recommended SMD by physicians or pharmacists. Results from multiple logistic regression analysis indicated that positive patient characteristics included age (OR＝1.154, 95%CI [1.026-1.298], P＝0.017), understanding of the regular medicine names (1.724, [1.039-2.859], P＝0.035), and recommendation of SMD by physicians or pharmacists (5.991, [2.616-13.722], P<0.001). A negative patient characteristic was the number of pharmacy visits (0.587, [0.383-0.899], P＝0.014). The most influential positive factor was the recommendation of SMD by physicians or pharmacists; however, only 5.4% of the participants had experienced this. The findings of this study indicated important that health care providers and the government to work together to devise easy-to-understand measures to inform local residents about the importance of SMD and how to them, conduct educational activities.