Evaluating and Expanding Rural Victorian Community Pharmacists Role in Providing Oral Healthcare

Objective

To investigate rural pharmacists' perceptions of oral health services they provide in towns without dental practitioners and how to best expand their role.

Setting

Community pharmacists are well placed to provide oral health services in rural areas where oral health is poorer and access to dental care is limited. Pharmacists' views on oral health advice delivery and how to best expand their role in oral health need to be assessed.

Participants

Participants were community pharmacists practicing in small rural towns without a dental practitioner in Victoria, Australia.

Design

Eleven community pharmacists participated in semi-structured telephone interviews that were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were thematically analysed using NVivo software.

Results

Five overarching themes were derived from the data analysis, including confidence in delivering oral hygiene instructions, barriers and facilitators to providing oral health advice, recommendations for advertising and implementing oral health promotion, undergoing oral health training and recommendations for increased collaboration with dental practitioners. Pharmacists were confident in delivering basic oral hygiene instructions upon patient request. Most pharmacists were interested in verbally delivering oral health advice. Barriers identified included time constraints and operating as a single pharmacist. Pharmacists requested enhanced training, ideally online as continued professional development and support from pharmacy educational and regulatory bodies or dental practitioners to be able to expand their scope.

Conclusion

There is a need for additional training, resources and support for rural pharmacists to deliver this expanded role in oral health to improve oral health outcomes for rural people.