Objective: Information on medicines brought to hospital by inpatients is essential to optimize drug use and patient safety.  However, the actual situation and usefulness of identifying such medicines on the emergent admission of patients remain to be clarified.  The objective of this study was to examine the usefulness of identifying the medicines patients bring to the hospital on emergent admission.
Methods: We compared the source of information on identifying medicines between two groups of patient: emergent admissions (N=276) and elective admissions (N=50), and also investigated intervention by pharmacists regarding the medicines patients had brought with them.
Results: Regarding the source of information to identify the medicines, the rate of utilizing medicine notebooks on emergent admission was significantly lower than on elective admission, and the rate of inquiring with community pharmacies on emergent admission was significantly higher than on elective admission.  The frequencies of intervention by pharmacists in the two groups were similar, and, therefore, the usefulness of identifying the medicines patients brought was noted regardless of the admission course.
Conclusion: Identifying the medicines patients bring to the hospital might be useful on emergent admission.  Hospital pharmacists should promote an increase in the medicine notebook utilization rate and reinforce cooperation with community pharmacies.