Effects of patient-pharmacist communication in the treatment of asthma.

We studied the relationship between patient-pharmacist communication and asthma treatment, including patient understanding of drug therapy, ability to self-treat with inhaled drugs, and control over asthma. The study was among adult patients who had received inhaled steroidal or other drugs from community pharmacies in Hokkaido, Ibaragi, Tochigi, Kanagawa, and Osaka prefectures for at least one year. During the month of November 2007, pharmacists explained the study to patients and obtain consent before distributing questionnaires to be filled out and mailed back. Survey items covered the nature/extent of the pharmacist's explanation, the patient's degree of understanding, frequency of inhaled steroid use, frequency of asthma attacks, degree of improvement with inhaler use, skill in using inhaled drugs, and self-evaluation of communication with the pharmacist. Analysis was carried out using the 114 valid data sets obtained. The ratio of men to women was 4: 6, and the average age was 61.8 years. Compared with patients citing communication problems with pharmacists, those who had good communication received significantly higher scores in terms of understanding the purpose of inhalers, drug interactions, and side effects, and coping with attacks, as well as in indices of skill in using inhaled drugs. The degree of improvement in asthma attacks was also significantly higher among patients with self-evaluation of good communication with pharmacists. We suggest that communication between patient and pharmacist is associated with understanding of pharmacotherapy, as well as their ability to use inhaled medications and gaining good control over their asthma.

An analysis of job search behaviour of inactive nurses in Japan.

AIM: The aim of this paper is to examine inactive nurses' job-searching behaviours to return to healthcare workplace at where serious difficulty of meeting demand and supply of nurses exist. DESIGN AND METHODS: To clarify the factors that would make their attempts easy or difficult, successful or not, we employed econometric method to analyse the probability of job finding in terms of both the length of duration and the quality of consequence in job-seeking behaviour by using microdata pooled on Japan Nursing Association Computer System (NCCS), in which inactive nurses' individual attributes (gender, age, academic background, the types of qualifications, the number of preschool aged children, etc) are stated. RESULTS: From the estimations, we found that (i) having preschool children is one of the factors of delaying job finding, and failing to obtain desired workplace and working style; (ii) nurses with higher educational backgrounds tend to spend a longer time in finding jobs and (iii) training programme for the returners may not work well in case of shorter career blank, while may support for those who have longer one. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: To meet the desired demand for qualified nurses in healthcare facilities, we should (i) develop more supportive working environment for nurses with preschool children, such as more flexible working time and shifts; (ii) encourage the employment of higher educated nurses by reforming compensation scheme, as well as reconsidering of the standard of skill-mix; and (iii) redevelop training programme for returners with more practical contents.