Abstract
BackgroundThe WHO recognises that community pharmacists are the most accessible healthcare professionals to the general public. Most patients regularly visit community pharmacies for health information and also seek advice from pharmacists with respect to signs and symptoms of cancer. As readily accessible health care professionals, community pharmacists are also in the best position to include cancer-screening initiatives into their practice. Pharmacists are therefore in a good position to raise awareness when they counsel people who buy over-the-counter medication for the control of possible cancer-related symptoms. The aim of this review was to critically appraise evidence gathered from studies that; (1) explore or assess knowledge of community pharmacist on signs and symptoms of cancer, (2) explore or assess knowledge of community pharmacist on cancer screening.MethodsEMBASE (ovid), CINAHL (EBSCOhost) and MEDLINE (EBSCOhost) were systematically searched for studies conducted between 2005 to July 2017. Studies that focused on knowledge of community pharmacist in cancer screening, signs and symptoms were included.ResultsA total of 1538 articles were identified from the search, of which 4 out of the 28 potentially relevant abstracts were included in the review. Findings of the selected studies revealed lack of sufficient knowledge on breast cancer screening, signs and symptoms. Both studies attributed knowledge limitation as the cause of reason for the key findings of their studies.ConclusionThe selected studies focused largely on breast cancer, which hinder the generalizability and transferability of the findings. Hence there is a need for more studies to be conducted in this area to draw a better conclusion.
Highlights
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recognises that community pharmacists are the most accessible healthcare professionals to the general public
Cancer causes more deaths than all coronary heart disease or strokes, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates for 2011 [27]. This is likely as a result of late presentation of the disease [16] which have been attributed to a number of factors such as poor awareness of the signs and symptoms of cancer, cancer risk factors, poor availability of tests or screening programs [9, 12, 13]
Efforts should be made on providing pharmacists with high quality Breast cancer continuous education
Summary
The WHO recognises that community pharmacists are the most accessible healthcare professionals to the general public. As readily accessible health care professionals, community pharmacists are in the best position to include cancer-screening initiatives into their practice. Cancer causes more deaths than all coronary heart disease or strokes, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates for 2011 [27]. This is likely as a result of late presentation of the disease [16] which have been attributed to a number of factors such as poor awareness of the signs and symptoms of cancer, cancer risk factors, poor availability of tests or screening programs [9, 12, 13].
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