December, 2019
Eisai’s employees from the Tsukuba Research Laboratories assisted as instructors the medical experience-based tour “Kids Medical University” for elementary school students, hosted by the University of Tsukuba Hospital.
This is a very popular original event of the University of Tsukuba Hospital for students of upper grades of neighboring elementary schools, which they can experience various leading-edge fields related to medical care with themes such as the body structure, the importance of life, and consideration for others. The content covers a wide range of fields, including pharmacy, nursing, nutrition, transplantation, internal medicine, surgery, emergency medicine, space medicine, and disaster medicine, as well as also aims for developing interests and attractions of students aspiring to be medical professionals.
Every year since 2012, this event has been held during the summer vacation period, and Eisai has been assisting every year.
Also in this year, Eisai’s researchers from Tsukuba Research Laboratories served as instructors, and the “Medication Seminar” was held.
Although medication is very familiar with every elementary school student, the opportunities to think about the medication itself are few. In the medication seminar, students repeated the three experiments and observations to look for the answers for questions such as “How do medications work?” “How can we make the fine powder medications easier to take?” “What is the relationship between medication form and solubility?”
Students listened to the instructors very carefully, checked the experiment procedures, and divided their roles.
Students made hypothesis “Which medication is easier to dissolve?” and verified it by themselves.
* We used the safe materials such as sugar for the “medication” in this experiment.
In order for children and elderlies to make the medication easier to take, students tried to make tablets from powder.
Handmade tablet is done.
Students comparatively observed the dissolution difference between other medication form (capsule), ramune candy, and their handmade tablet.
Students were nervous at the beginning, however, as the experiment progressed, they actively expressed their thoughts, such as “This may dissolve faster!” and the appearances which students enjoyed with curiosity were impressive.
Usually, Eisai's hhc activities* are mainly spending time with patients with some kind of diseases and understanding their emotions, but this interaction with elementary school students, who have the potential to become future medical professionals, was a great opportunity for Eisai’s employees to be more motivated to create better medications by the time he/she becomes medical professionals. We would be happy if some of the students who participated in this seminar become pharmaceutical researchers in the future.
We would like to express our gratitude to the University of Tsukuba Hospital for the precious opportunity. We will make further contributions to satisfy the diverse needs and to improve benefits of patients and their families.
* Eisai aims that each employee creates individual knowledge and then shares it with other employees.
In order for each employee to recognize Eisai's hhc philosophy as a shared value rather than as the ideas of an individual and to express that philosophy in each employee's daily work duties, we ask the employees to participate in hhc activities in their separate divisions or organizations.