Understanding of Incompatibility Information Regarding One-Dose Packages and Improving Understanding of Incompatibility and Dispensing Methods through Distribution of Incompatibility Information

To ensure the proper use of drugs,pharmacists must pay attention to drug incompatibility information.However,drug incompatibilityinformation relating to tablets or capsules in one-dose packages (DII) is not well understood.Therefore,weactively collected DII and shared it with Tottori West District pharmacists and investigated how they currently dispensedone-dose packages as well as their degree of understanding of DII.For sharing,we selected 3 combinations of one-dosepackage including the olmesartan medoxomil(OM)-metformin hydrochloride (MET) combination for which incompatibilityhad actually been reported in our area.Before sharing DII,hardly any of the pharmacists knew about such information inthe package inserts,suggesting that it was not widely available to them.Our sharing of DII enhanced understanding of itfor all combinations.Also,the dispensing of one-dose packages was improved in many hospitals and community pharmacies.This suggestedthat the active collection of DII and its sharing by pharmacists helped ensure proper drug use.However,we should shareDII continuously to achieve a thorough understanding of it and additional methods may be required (for example,makingpresentations at meetings) for this purpose.We should also actively collect DII because the DII in package inserts is insufficientto ensure proper drug use.