[What does "pharmacognosy" mean for pharmacists?].

Pharmacists consider pharmacognosy to be a part of Kampo-related education. However, actually, pharmacists cannot generally apply pharmacognosy to their work in clinical settings because they do not have sufficient opportunities to learn about the relationship between pharmacognosy and Kampo in the Faculty of Pharmacy. Meanwhile, in the Faculty of Medicine, education in Kampo has spread at an accelerated rate since the amendment of the medical education core curriculum in 2001, leading to the present condition of 73 out of a total of 80 Faculties of Medicine in Japan already having adopted Kampo as a part of that curriculum. However, clinical education is often focused on, while items of pharmacognosy are hardly mentioned; therefore, pharmacognosy remains not as important in medical education. It is thus often very difficult for pharmacists who have only learned Kampo based on pharmacognosy to understand the prescription of a physician who has received Kampo education, and this remains a considerable problem for pharmacists who are required to explain how to take a drug to a patient in clinical practice. What role does pharmacognosy have to play to bridge the gap between such physicians and pharmacists? Here, I would like to describe what I believe is necessary regarding pharmacognosy education in the future, both from the perspectives of pharmacists and physicians who prescribe Kampo medicine.