Clinically significant discoveries are born from casual, everyday questions.

A pharmacist's job is to identify patients' problems through conversation and solve them.

Therefore, it's important to notice small irregularities in your daily work and to ask yourself, "What is this?" or "Why is this happening?"

I believe that the "association between linezolid and nausea" that I wrote about in my paper was the result of delving deeply into such everyday questions.

I recommend that all of you also develop the habit of investigating any questions that come to mind, rather than just letting them be.

I believe that such an attitude will surely be valuable in the profession of a pharmacist.

(As of November 2023)

I think I aspired to be a pharmacist because both of my parents were pharmacists, and I had known what the job entailed since I was a child. Seeing my father being thanked by his patients, I vaguely felt, even as a child, that being a pharmacist was a wonderful job.

When I became a high school student and it was time to decide on my future path, I still wanted to be a pharmacist. I struggled with math and was actually better at Japanese, but I couldn't imagine what kind of profession I would pursue even if I went into a liberal arts faculty. In the end, partly because my father and others recommended it for its solid postgraduate education, I chose to go to Kyoritsu College of Pharmacy, which was set to merge with Keio. The merger happened while I was a student, and I became enrolled in the Department of Pharmacy at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Keio University. During my time at university, rather than just studying, I joined a club and devoted myself to volleyball, enjoying campus life like many other university students.

After graduation, I was invited by Shungo Imai (link to external site) , a senior from the Volleyball Team who had already started working at Hokkaido University Hospital, to join the hospital. (He is now a full-time lecturer at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Keio University, and a member of the Laboratory of Drug Informatics ). I considered two options, a hospital or a dispensing pharmacy, but I thought a university hospital would allow me to study a wide range of subjects. Hokkaido is known as a paradise for motorcyclists and also has great snow quality, so I was also partly motivated by the thought that I could enjoy my hobbies of motorcycling and snowboarding.

The work at the Department of Pharmacy at Hokkaido University Hospital can be broadly divided into three areas: the "Injections Preparation Room," which handles the storage of injectable drugs, dispensing based on prescriptions, and supply to the wards; the "Dispensary," which handles the storage and dispensing of oral and topical medications; and the "Formulary," which handles in-house preparations and aseptic preparation of anticancer drugs. I am currently assigned to the "Injections Preparation Room."

To talk about my career up to now, when I first started, Hokkaido University Hospital was expanding its ward services. From my second year, I worked for four years in the orthopedic surgery ward and three years in the dermatology ward. After that, as many junior colleagues joined, I handed over my ward duties to them, and now I work with patients through prescriptions. I have interacted with many patients and gained a variety of experiences, and I believe all of it is proving useful for the research I am currently focusing on.

What means are available to solve patients' problems? There is information that can be gleaned from the package inserts of drugs, but there is still much that is unknown. There are times when I still can't find an answer even after searching through countless papers. It is at times like these that I keenly feel the importance of research.

Some inpatients administered the antibiotic linezolid experience nausea. The package insert contained no information about nausea, and there were no similar studies, so I decided to verify for myself whether linezolid truly induces nausea. Specifically, I referred to electronic medical records, investigated the association between antibiotics and the presence of nausea, and conducted a comparative verification between linezolid and a drug with no reported cases of nausea. That became my first paper, which I worked on before entering graduate school.

My next paper investigated what kind of people are prone to nausea, targeting those who actually vomited due to linezolid. The data source for this was also electronic medical records, and I published it in an international journal as a working adult graduate student at Hokkaido University Graduate School.

And now, as both a pharmacist at Hokkaido University Hospital and a graduate student, I am writing my third paper on the same theme. Linezolid is used for certain bone infections, but many patients complain of nausea and being unable to eat, and there were many cases where common antiemetics like metoclopramide were ineffective. So, I wanted to determine exactly what mechanism leads to such results. Therefore, similar to my first paper, I compared linezolid with other drugs, but this time I used medical big data from a claims database instead of electronic medical records.

Working on these papers has made me realize that clinically significant discoveries are born from the casual questions that arise in conversations with patients, doctors, and nurses. And that the desire to solve patients' problems becomes the driving force for research.

A pharmacist's job is to talk thoroughly with patients, listen carefully to what their problems are, and solve those problems. My father was the same, and as a result of solving their problems, you sometimes get a direct "thank you" from the patients. In other words, I believe the job of a pharmacist exists to help patients realize the safety of drugs and their trust in medical care, and that's where the fulfillment lies.

Therefore, people who can notice questions, and who don't ignore the questions that come to mind but investigate them on their own, are suited to be pharmacists. It doesn't have to be about pharmacology, but if you feel "I wonder what that is" or "I wonder why" in your daily life, please look it up right away. I believe that such an attitude will surely be valuable in the profession of a pharmacist.

Being a pharmacist is an interesting job. For those who are currently aiming for it, please proceed on that path with confidence. I'm cheering for you.