Objective: This scoping review aims to identify current and potential roles of community pharmacists in supporting cancer survivorship care and report the barriers and facilitators they face in providing survivorship support.
Sample and setting: Research articles focused on cancer survivorship care interventions recommended or provided by community pharmacists, their outcomes, and barriers and facilitators to pharmacy-based care.
Procedures: A systematic search strategy was conducted in Medline, Scopus, Embase, Cochrane Library and CINAHL, along with targeted grey literature searching and reference list reviews. Abstracts and full text were screened against inclusion and exclusion criteria defined a priori using the Population, Concept, Context framework. Descriptive analysis and inductive qualitative content analysis were conducted to identify themes and synthesise the findings.
Result: Forty-three articles from a total of 44,336 articles retrieved were included. The emerging roles for community pharmacists covered five key focus areas: (1) medication dispensing and management; (2) lifestyle and supportive care; (3) side effect management; (4) emotional and psychosocial support; and (5) collaboration with other healthcare providers. Current interventions showed significant positive impacts on patients’ quality of life and on the quality of cancer survivorship care provided. Identified barriers included a lack of knowledge and training in oncology care, limited access to patient records, lack of integration into oncology care teams, limited patient awareness of their services, and limited resources. The facilitators of pharmacy-based care included increased education and training in oncology, better access to patient records, and improved communication among healthcare providers.
Conclusion and implications: Community pharmacists have the potential to significantly contribute to survivorship care but face several barriers that need to be addressed. Better emphasising community pharmacists will ultimately enhance patient quality of life and quality of cancer survivorship care.