Pharmacy students screening for pre-diabetes/diabetes with a validated questionnaire in community pharmacies during their experiential rotation in Alberta, Canada

PURPOSE Type 2 diabetes is a major condition impacting morbidity, mortality, and health care costs in Canada. Pharmacists are very accessible and are in an ideal position to promote public health education. The primary goal of this study was to incorporate public health promotion and education into a community pharmacy experiential education rotation for fourth year pharmacy students to screen for the risk of pre-diabetes/diabetes in adults. A secondary goal was to determine the frequency of common risk factors for pre-diabetes/diabetes in adults in the community setting. METHOD Fourth year pharmacy students were invited to recruit all adults 25 years or older attending community pharmacies to complete a pre-diabetes/diabetes risk assessment questionnaire. If the participants were at risk, the participants were provided education about risk reduction for developing pre-diabetes/diabetes. RESULTS A total of 340 participants completed a risk assessment questionnaire. Over 90% of people approached agreed to complete a risk assessment questionnaire. The common risk factors were overweight (154/45%), hypertension (102/30%), taking medications for hypertension (102/30%), and having symptoms of diabetes (111/33%). The ethnic minorities have 2.56 (confidence interval = 1.48-44.1) times greater odds of having a family history of diabetes compared to non-minority subjects. CONCLUSION Pharmacy students are able to screen community-based patients for pre-diabetes/diabetes risks. The most common risk factors presented were overweight, hypertension, and taking medications for hypertension.