PHABRIC II
Developing A Community Pharmacy Service Profile to Facilitate Early Diagnosis of Bowel Cancer: A survey of community pharmacies in London and Wales
What is the purpose of this study?
This is the next step following our first PHABRIC study to take the stakeholder developed ideas forward, assess them for feasibility, and understand the potential role of community pharmacy staff in supporting earlier diagnosis of bowel cancer. First, we are running a survey which asks pharmacy staff to explore how much they know about bowel cancer, how much time they spent talking to the public about bowel cancer and how feasible it is to provide specific services to help earlier diagnosis of bowel cancer within community pharmacy.
Who are we inviting to take part?
At this stage, we are inviting community pharmacy staff including community pharmacists, over the counter staff, and pharmacy technicians, because each of these roles target individuals who potentially would not necessarily reach out to a doctor. Survey questions have been co-designed with community pharmacy staff, clinical experts, and patient and public representatives. The survey covers five key topics: bowel cancer consultation frequency, initiation and duration of bowel cancer discussion, pharmacists’ ability to take on extra responsibility, training needs, and future referral pathways.
What are we going to do with this data?
The collected data will be analysed using descriptive tests to identify general patterns, and inferential statistics will be used to compare responses, e.g. respondents’ characteristics and geographic locations. Thematic analysis will be conducted on free-text responses, and the analysis will aim to quantify the five key topics covered in the survey, as well as identify the perceived barriers to delivering bowel cancer-related services.
Next steps
Following the completion of our survey analysis, we will begin collecting qualitative data at participating pharmacy sites through both in-depth qualitative interviews with pharmacy staff, and in-person ethnographic participant observation of daily pharmacy activity. Sites selected for this stage of the project will include pharmacies in rural and urban areas from both England and Wales.
Sounds great! How do I find out more?
We will continually update this page as the study progresses, and study results will be made available in an academic journal once analysis is complete. We will also make the final report available on this website at the completion of our study.
In the meantime, for any questions you can contact:
Principal Researcher: Prof Christian Von Wagner | c.wagner@ucl.ac.uk
This project is funded by Cancer Research UK, Early Detection and Diagnosis Primer Award, ref: EDDPMA-Nov24/100037