Analyzing the Role of Pharmacists in Diabetes Screening and Promotion

This essay delves into the vital role of pharmacists in diabetes screening and health promotion, particularly within the Australian healthcare context. It begins by highlighting health promotion strategies and the pharmacist's position as a key healthcare provider, especially in community settings. The essay then defines diabetes mellitus, focusing on type 2 diabetes, its screening processes, and the importance of early detection. It outlines the conditions under which pharmacist-led screening is suitable, emphasizing the significance of sensitivity and specificity in screening tests. The discussion extends to the impact of health promotion programs, the mixed responses from the Australian population, and the community pharmacist's role in arranging health seminars and providing essential services. The essay also compares diabetes-related public health promotions across different Australian states, referencing relevant research to support its arguments and underscore the pharmacist's contribution to public health and diabetes management.

Running head: PHARMACY
PHARMACY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Nowadays health promotion is regarded as an integral part of pharmacy community.
According to World Health Organisation (WHO), health promotion is known as the process
of enabling people to improve and control over their health condition. Various different
health promotion strategies have been implemented by the state as well as federal
governments of Australia to improve the socio-health condition of a society. Such health
promotion strategies help to prevent the different conditions that has become critical for
different states of Australia such as alcohol and drug abuse promotional campaigns in
Southern Australian States, smoking cessation associated health promotional program in New
South Wales, diabetes mellitus related health promotional program in states northern as well
as western Australia and other complication of as well as insipidus and many more. It is
noteworthy to state that pharmacists always play an inadmissible role in promoting the health
of different individuals as well as in different states of Australia. Pharmacists are considered
as the third largest regulated health care group across the globe and in Australia as well it is
considered to be the most effective means for the growth and development of the effective
healthcare processes (Bell et al., 2016). Considering the fact that pharmacists are the most
accessible healthcare practitioners, community pharmacist lays an inadmissible role in the
development of health promotional activities across the society. This essay deals with the role
of pharmacist in diabetes screening and its promotion across the individuals of the society.
Diabetes mellitus is generally known as a bunch of metabolic diseases that are
characterized by hyperglycemia. Hyperglycemia occurs due to defect in insulin secretion
from the beta cells of the islets of Langerhans of pancreas. The chronic diabetes mellitus is
intimately associated with different long-term disorders, damage of different organs such as
kidneys (nephropathy), heart, eyes (retinopathy) and many more. These individuals also have
a significantly greater predisposition of having hypertension, dyslipidemia as well as obesity
(Siu 2015).

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All of these factors lead to the development of recommendations for diabetes
screening. Diabetes screenings are performed generally by the health care experts. However,
this type of screening (diabetes) is not applicable for type I diabetes mellitus or gestational
diabetes mellitus. In both the cases, type I diabetes mellitus and gestational diabetes mellitus
are detected after the symptoms develop. According to the WHO report it can be said that
prevalence of diabetes among adults was around 7.4% in 1995 while it was expected that
within 2025 the prevalence diabetes among adults will be around 9 %. However, with the
increasing age, obesity and diminished or reduced physical activity the risk of developing
type 2 diabetes mellitus also increases rapidly.
There is significant distinction between the diagnostic testing (in this case type 2
diabetes mellitus) of a disease and screening of particular disease (in this case type 2 diabetes
mellitus). It has been observed that when an individual affected with diabetes mellitus
exhibits symptoms of that particular disease. The main theme behind the screening of a
particular disease (in this case type 2 diabetes mellitus) is to detect the asymptomatic
individuals who are likely to have diabetes (Siu 2015).
Diabetes screening test has two unique features. These two unique features are sensitivity
and specificity. The sensitivity of a diabetes screening test is referred as the proportion of
people with the type 2 diabetes mellitus who give positive result on the screening test. The
specificity of a diabetes screening test is referred as the proportion of people who do not have
the type 2 diabetes mellitus who test negative on the screening test (Hsu et al., 2017).
In general the screening of type 2 diabetes mellitus in asymptomatic population by
pharmacists is suitable when below described four conditions are met.
1) The disease (in this case type 2 diabetes mellitus) signifies an important health issue
that imposes a huge drastic burden on population.

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2) The natural history or background of type 2 diabetes mellitus should be clearly
understood.
3) There always has to be a familiar, significant asymptomatic (preclinical) stage during
which the disease (type 2 diabetes mellitus) is diagnosed.
4) The tests that can detect asymptomatic or preclinical stage of the type 2 diabetes
mellitus have to be acceptable and reliable (Harding et al. 2015).
As per Veale et al. (2016), there are multiple complications that has been observed in
the critical health complications and life style aspects that the Australian population is
suffering from and requires a critical development of the aspects required in the development
of the effective abilities. The Australian population’s response to the health promotional
programs run by the state and federal government is mixed. As per George et al. (2018), there
are mixed responses to the public health programs run by the federal and state governments
of Australia and it is important for them to understand the effectiveness, the complication and
the concerns of the population in the process. In order to increase the awareness on the
diabetes screening programme pharmacists arrange different healthcare seminars.
Pharmacists always work in the community with a smaller proportion in academia, hospital
pharmacy, industry as well as research. Community pharmacies always provide a wide range
of products (with respect to diabetes prescription and nonprescription medication, blood
glucose meters and testing strips, needles and dietary supplements) as well as services (such
as medication review, vaccination, unit dose dispensing, needle exchange, point of care
testing, disposal of unwanted medicines, etc). Thus, community pharmacists play an
inadmissible role in screening type 2 diabetes mellitus (Hsu et al., 2017).
In spite of the significant differences in the methods of type 2 diabetes mellitus
screening, pharmacist interventions generally have a significant positive effect, but

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sometimes, in many cases, it was not clear what particular impact the improvement had on
clinical outcomes.. In order to develop a proper knowledge about diabetes screening
pharmacists play an inadmissible role by facilitating the community pharmacy practice.
Community pharmacy practice, in turn, imposes a significant contribution to social healthcare
(Strand, Davidson & Schulze, 2017).
According to Smith et al., (2019) in Queensland, diabetes related public health
promotions follows the pattern of public health awareness programs. However, in New South
Whales, public health implementations depends upon implementing more health
professionals in the hospitals. These strategies can be compared efficiently. Increasing the
public awareness alone cannot make the people realize the diseased condition. Whereas
appointing highly qualified medical professionals in different hospitals for the treatment of
diabetes can improve the health promotion strategy. This comparison can be directly made in
relation to a research article (Ackermann et al., 2015. However, public awareness also plays a
major role in letting the people know about the disease and also its risk factors. This feature is
absent in case of the health promotion strategy followed in New South Whales.

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