Japan's Pharmacy Experience Rundown

Our trip was hosted by the lovely Kobe Gakuin University, a college that not only enrolled pharmacy students but a wide variety of degrees as well. They made our trip a fantastic experience and quite memorable with their hospitality. Our first day was a tour of campus - a wide open, modern and very beautiful college with up to date facilities and class rooms. We were treated to a welcome barbecue customary to the entire college where we were able to chat closely with students who we just met at the meet and greet while enjoying some delicious grilled foods. As our lectures began, we learned many things about how much Japan's pharmacy system is than ours.

Our class topics included insurance, hyperlipidemia, common pharmacy practice options, and physical assessment. These were pivotal topics in Japanese Pharmacy curriculum and we just got a short primer on the above. The students here undergo a 6 year program with no undergraduate studies so it is straight to pharmacy after high school. Their years are split similarly to ours with didactic learning followed by clinical experiences. One thing I noticed was that the dependency on medication was not as great in Japan due to their healthy lifestyle. Medications viewed by the population are typically preferred in a powder form, most likely along the lines of the old addage that the more bitter something is the more potent it is. We were shown what is known as an Oblate, a rice paper package which can make taking powder medications easy, very commonly used for children and elderly. In America we prefer syrups and liquids but Japan has eliminated the need for multiple formulations with this invention, at least to their liking. Our tours continued as we experienced a Kampo Chinese Medicine Pharmacy as well as a retail and hospital setting. Hospital was in my opinion the most unique. Hospital pharmacists are very numerous as there are no technicians and they mainly seemed to be doing inpatient dispensing rather than clinical work as we have in the states. Regardless, more and more opportunities are rising in Japan for pharmacists as well as their median salary. Currently they are undervalued and have to go through many tribulations to get paid closely to an American retail pharmacist.