Participation of pharmacist CRC in practical on-site training--a survey by questionnaires for pharmacy students.

In order to estimate the 4th grade-students' knowledge regarding clinical trials, we carried out the questionnaire survey to the students being about to take practice in hospitals, and could collect answers from 163 students. This survey revealed that about 25% of the students could not draw the difference between "clinical trial" and "clinical research". As for the question about the technical terms regarding the clinical trial, clear correlation between students' learning experience and their knowledge was suggested. Furthermore, over 46% of the students answered that the pharmacists acting as clinical research coordinator (CRC) could not recruit new subjects, and ca. 40% of the students answered that the pharmacists acting as CRC could prescribe new drug. These misunderstandings seemed to result in the fact that most of the students could not have any chance to actually watch CRC's work related to the university curriculum. Based on the findings described above, sharing the information on the clinical trial between hospitals and universities seemed to be required to deepen students' understanding.