Factors modulating physician-pharmacist collaboration in patient care: a cross-sectional survey in Hokkaido, Japan.

Authors

Tetsuji Miura, Miki Kaneuchi-Yamashita, Hiroshi Mihara, Masaki Sugimura

Published in

The International journal of pharmacy practice. Nov 10, 2026. Epub Nov 10, 2026.

Abstract

The status of physician-pharmacist collaboration and barriers to such collaboration in Japan remain unclear. This exploratory study aimed to examine and characterize physician-pharmacist collaboration in Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan.
Questionnaires were mailed to 120 hospitals (all local government-funded hospitals, regional centre hospitals, and their equivalents) and 340 community pharmacies near the selected medical facilities in Hokkaido Prefecture. The survey assessed the perceived roles of pharmacists, perceived barriers to physician-pharmacist collaboration, pharmacists' accessibility to patients' medical information, relationships between factors in the three categories, and frequency of physician-pharmacist collaboration.
Fifty-seven physicians, 45 hospital pharmacists, and 165 community pharmacists participated in the survey. The median frequency of collaboration between the physicians and community pharmacists was "less than once a month," which was lower than that reported by hospital pharmacists and physicians. While the perceived roles of pharmacists showed minor differences among the three groups, substantial discrepancies emerged regarding the perceived barriers to collaboration and the level of accessibility to patients' medical information. Infrequent physician-pharmacist collaboration was associated with being a community pharmacist, not considering dose-adjustment advice to be a pharmacists' role, perceiving limited time as a barrier, and having limited access to disease management targets.
This study revealed a suboptimal level of physician-pharmacist collaboration in a prefecture of Japan and identified factors associated with infrequent collaboration. The findings may characterize barriers to physician-pharmacist collaboration in Japan and how they differ from those in other countries.

PMID:
43007887
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 11 Nov 2026.

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