• YAKHAK HOEJI
• /
• v.54 no.4
• /
• pp.244-251
• /
• 2010

Standardized parenteral nutrition is required to improve patient's safety, clinical appropriateness and to increase uniformity between institution and institutions. We assessed the consistency with the American society for parenteral and enteral nutrition (A.S.P.E.N.) practice guideline for PN by evaluating current practice process for parenteral nutrition formulation in inpatients pharmacies in Korea. Each question in this survey was based on 2007 A.S.P.E.N. recommendations of standard parenteral nutrition formulation, the American society of health-system pharmacists (ASHP), and the United State Pharmacopoeia (USP) Chapter 797 guideline for compounding parenteral nutritions. All 90 Korean society of hospital pharmacist (KSHP) member directors of pharmacy were requested to respond to the survey in order to compare the survey results to ASHP national survey of pharmacy practice in hospital settings (2002) in compliance with A.S.P.E.N. guideline. We had final response rate of 35.6%. 25 (100%) hospitals complied with this Garb guideline (response rate was 84.4%) which was the highest compliance. Only 17.9% of hospital pharmacies were actively involved in complications monitoring. Monitoring complications and efficacy were least in compliance with the A.S.P.E.N. guideline. 69.0% of Korean pharmacists adjusted medication dosage based on disease state or monitoring laboratory data in compliance with the A.S.P.E.N. guideline. Over 50% of the hospital pharmacies failed to provide and evaluate staff training in aseptic manipulation skills periodically. Korean hospital pharmacies need to comply with the standard practice guideline for compounding sterile preparation in order to provide better quality of parenteral nutrition service for specific patient population.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.1-8
• /
• 2015

A newly-structured Korean pharmacist license exam has been launched in 2015, reflecting upon the changes in the pharmacy curriculum from a 4 year program to a 6 year program in 2009. In order to provide new ideas to ensure that the new exam is one of the most effective pharmacist evaluations that have taken place thus far, this study was done to compare the pharmacy exams in Korea and Canada. One of the major differences noted between the two countries' exams is that along with paper based MCQ portion of the exam, Canada's exam also includes a performance-based section, known as OSCE, which the Korean Pharmacy Exam (KPE) does not have. Furthermore, with the MCQ portion of the exam, the Canadian exam asks about 300 questions, with 450 minutes of test time allocated and taken during a period of two consecutive days, the KPE asks 350 questions, with 325 minutes of test time allocated in one day. Although, similarly, many of the questions in both exams place emphasis on clinical or patient care, Canada's exam puts significantly more emphasis (50.5% of exam questions) on these types of questions than Korea (29.7% of exam questions). However, this percentage does not reflect the exact weight placed for the specific areas of knowledge it requires to answer these questions, since the types of questions asked in this section in Canada could be placed in another section on the KPE. Canada's exam also has more questions (10% +150 questions for BC) on the topics of law and ethics compared to the KPE (5.7%). The reason for this may be that the Canadian society puts emphasis on the legal and ethical duties of pharmacists as a leader. However, since each country is unique in their social, economical, and cultural points of view, comparing the KPE to the Canadian licensing exam and applying these differences to the new KPE may not be appropriate. One last thing to consider is that, as WHO/FIP mentioned, in good pharmacy practice, continually updating and developing an appropriate pharmacy exam with consideration of societal changes, is key to success in developing the scope of practice for current and future pharmacists.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
• /
• v.26 no.3
• /
• pp.245-253
• /
• 2016

Objective: This study was conducted to evaluate payer-driven medication adherence intervention program from the patient's and counselor's perspectives. Methods: Target patients for intervention were selected by retrospective adherence measures based on national health insurance claims data for hypertension, diabetes and hyperlipidemia. As a serial intervention for higher risk groups of medication non-adherence, initial direct mailing, the first direct telephone call and the second direct call or a home visit were followed. Interview approach to qualitative inquiry was used to evaluate intervention results. Results: Participants including 4 patients received telephone calls, and 4 National Health Insurance Service staff and 4 pharmacists participated as counselors were interviewed regarding their impression of the intervention program. Three major themes arose: overall perception; necessities; and suggestions for success, of the intervention. Despite short period of intervention, educational intervention by telephone counseling involving pharmacists shows potential to improve self-management of chronic disease, and pharmacist-involvement. But more sophisticated selection of target patients requiring the intervention and complementation of electronic database system would be necessary. In addition, personal disposition of counselor was revealed to be an important factor for achieving successful outcome of intervention. Conclusion: The findings suggest that the individualized counseling intervention would be an efficient option for improved medication adherence. Further researches should include longer periods of interventions, a quantitative analysis using adherence measures based on claims data and consideration of clinical benefits associated with the intervention.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
• /
• v.27 no.3
• /
• pp.178-185
• /
• 2017

Objective: Because of communication difficulties, the hearing-impaired face many disadvantages throughout their lives. One of those is limited access to health care services, particularly medication service. Though they suffer from problems related to taking medication properly, there have been few studies on their actual condition of medication use in Korea. This study is to investigate any obstacles to properly taking medications and, therefore, to suggest preliminary evidence for policy measures to improve safe medication use among the hearing-impaired. Methods: Study participants consisted of hearing-impaired individuals living in Seoul. We also interviewed two sign language interpreters in order to illuminate health care state of the hearing-impaired. In-depth interview for each study participant was recorded and was translated into a written script for analysis. Results: Study participants were comprised of four women (66.6%) and two men (33.3%). There were one participants in 20's, two participants in 30's, one 40's, and two 50's. Sign language interpreters were all women. One was in her 30's and the other was in her 40's. Communication difficulties have been found to be key barrier to use medication safely. A negative image of pharmacists also hinders safe medication usage, lowering access to local pharmacy and leading discretional self-medication. This article provides pharmacists with solutions to promote adherence in this population. Conclusion: The hearing-impaired had limited access to medication-related information as well as using services in a hospital and local pharmacy due to their disability. Institutional improvement for safe medication usage among the hearing-impaired is necessary.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
• /
• v.54 no.6
• /
• pp.507-521
• /
• 2010

Training for asthma patients by professionals has been highly emphasized for patients' self-management. In the present study, three standardized training sessions targeting hospital pharmacists were performed. On the basis of the number of training sessions taken, a non-educated group (CG), an once-educated group (NG), and a twice more-educated group (IG) were allocated. The most frequent errors of using an inhalant were shaking before the use in MDI while taking breathe out before inhaling in the case of DPI, and the total average number of errors were the biggest for CG and the smallest in IG. On comparison in the number of the four symptoms of asthma according to the level of seriousness, it was revealed that the total average number was the biggest in CG and the smallest in IG. In the level of awareness regarding the contents of training for patients, patients over 50 tended to answer that they were aware of education contents, and particularly in mouth rinsing and the use before/after a meal, significant similarity was examined. Regular asthma patient training performed by hospital pharmacists appeared to reduce errors in the inhaler usage, increase the quality of life of an patient, and help a patient remember the contents of the training. Especially among patients over 50, it was found to be more effective and retraining of more than two sessions was requisite.

• Journal of Korean Medical classics
• /
• v.23 no.1
• /
• pp.133-142
• /
• 2010

Preconditions for the separation of prescribing and dispensing medicinal herbs in Traditional Korean Medicine are classification of medicinal herbs for general public and special medical uses, establishment of national medicinal herb distribution company of governmental base, restriction in purchase of medicinal herbs for special medical use, partnership between doctors and pharmacists of Traditional Korean Medicine, and coverage of herbal medicine-based medication in national health insurance, etc. The number of Traditional Korean Medicine Pharmacists which was born during 'the herbal medicine conflict' initiated in 1993, goes over 1,000 and will increase by 120 annually. The number of Traditional Korean Medical Doctors is over 17,000 and increases by 850 annually. So in order to engage partnership between two groups, the government have to arrange the number of outputs of each group. Standardization and classification of diagnosis and diseases in Traditional Korean Medicine is a matter of course in the separation of prescribing and dispensing medicinal herbs. Related societies and academies need to do researches with governmental fund first. After these works, we can launch a task force team for implementation of process for the separation of prescribing and dispensing medicinal herbs in Traditional Korean Medicine properly. Entering the national health insurance system for full coverage of Korean Medicine care service will be essential for the patients. Implementation the separation of prescribing and dispensing medicinal herbs in Traditional Korean Medicine would be the core of health insurance coverage for medication.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.24
• /
• pp.10783-10786
• /
• 2015

Background: Smoking remains the major preventable cause of death worldwide, especially cancer-related death. Evidence clearly indicates that tobacco-related morbidity and mortality is reduced by smoking cessation. Pharmacists are well-positioned to provide tobacco cessation services an involvement of pharmacists in smoking cessation is encouraged by several organizations. While Indonesia's prevalence of smoking is in the first rank in Asian countries, none of the pharmacy schools in Indonesia are currently offering tobacco-related courses in their existing curricula at present. Our study aimed to develop and to evaluate the effectiveness of tobacco education (TE) for pharmacy students in Indonesia. Materials and Methods: A 6-hour TE was developed and evaluated using pre-test/post-test with control group design. A total of 137 fifth-year pharmacy students at Gadjah Mada University (GMU), Yogyakarta, were chosen as an intervention group while a total of 105 fifth-year students of Islamic University of Indonesia, (UII) served as the control group. Knowledge, perceived-role, self-efficacy, and ability to perform counseling using the 5A's framework were evaluated. Results: A significant improvement (P < 0.001) in knowledge, perceived-role, and self-efficacy was found in the intervention group but not in the control group. In addition, we revealed that 89.7% of the intervention group were able to perform counseling using 5A's. Conclusions: The developed TE significantly improved student knowledge, perceived-rolse, self-efficacy, and created an ability to perform cessation counseling. Integration of TE education in curricula of Indonesian pharmacy schools nation-wide should be encouraged.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.7 no.10
• /
• pp.875-884
• /
• 2020

Thailand has a rapidly growing pharmaceutical sector, which is the eighth largest in the Asia-Pacific region and one of the largest and most developed among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. This study examines how to provide the most appropriate approach to enhance Thailand's pharmaceutical services to dispense medicine to end consumers. The main objective is to determine the most appropriate corporate image for Thai Pharmacy Retail Stores (PRSs) for entering the ASEAN market community. An exploratory mixed-method design characterized by qualitative and quantitative phases of data collection and analysis and the linking of data from these two separate data strands was adopted to conduct an in-depth interview with pharmacists and the owner of pharmacy retail stores as well as 405 respondents who had visited a pharmacy retail store and interacted with pharmacists during the previous year. The multiple linear regression (MLR) was applied to analyze the relative influences of perceived service quality and the cultural dimension on the corporate image. Findings reveal that the perceived service quality and cultural dimension contribute 50% towards the corporate image, and the perceived service quality had more effect than cultural dimension. This study mainly focuses on PRSs in Thailand, while the findings show other analyses concerning how to successfully create and promote an effective PRS image for ASEAN markets.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
• /
• v.59 no.6
• /
• pp.278-283
• /
• 2015

The computerized prospective Drug Utilization Review (DUR) program supported by the Korean government has provided alerts to physicians and pharmacists since December 2010. This study aims to propose and apply the tiering system in "drug combinations to avoid (DCA)" and "age-precaution" alerts based on severity to improve the compliance of users. To propose the severity and clinical importance of 647 DCA alerts and 140 age precautions, a Delphi evaluation survey was conducted. An expert panel comprising 5 clinical pharmacists and 5 physicians were participated in mail surveys. Based on the results of Delphi survey, DCA pairs were classified into 3 groups; group 1 (70.6%), 2 (26.9%), and 3 (2.8%). Drug-age precaution ingredients were also classified into three groups; group 1 (53.6%), group 2 (40.7%), and group 3 (5.7%). When this grouping was applied to claim data from 2011 to 2013, the majority of alerts had occurred in the groups of high severity. Presenting DUR alerts with severity level is expected to improve the compliance of clinicians. The implementation of tiering system in DUR criteria should be considered.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
• /
• v.52 no.6
• /
• pp.507-513
• /
• 2008

The purpose of this study is to analyze the factors affecting financial performance of community pharmacies after the implementation of the new drug policy in Korea: separation of drug prescription and dispensing (SPD). The online survey questionnaires were sent to the active pharmacists of the total 20,633 community pharmacies in Korea and 1,147 pharmacists responded to the survey (the response rate was 5.5%). The questionnaire asked simple financial data in order to compare their financial performances before and after the policy. With the SPSS package (version 12.0), two levels of data analysis were used: 1) descriptive statistics to see the financial status of the pharmacies; and 2) multiple regression analysis to find the factors. {or A multiple regression method was used for the data analysis.} The finding illustrated that the average net benefit of the pharmacies was 4,870 thousand won in August 2006, and the major factors affecting the net benefit were the location of pharmacy (geographical proximity to medical institutions), number of prescriptions, drug management services for patients, chain pharmacy membership. The findings of this study suggest that service improvement for patients, revitalization of non-prescription drug sales, professional management will contribute to promote community based pharmacy business.