Introduction: Community pharmacists are in a unique position to encounter children visiting the pharmacy, which means they are potentially able to catch signs or instances of child abuse and neglect. The aim of this study is to establish the influence of training programs that pharmacists undergo on their understanding and knowledge regarding safeguarding issues and referral processes, to better manage the situation if it were to arise.
Methods: A 15 question survey was used to collect data from community pharmacists around the area of Cardiff, United Kingdom, regarding the safeguarding of children. The questionnaire explored community pharmacists' judgement on various aspects of the maltreatment of children, including the influence their training has on their outlook and behavior towards child safeguarding.
Results: Overall 72.8% (91 of 125) deemed their training adequate enough to aid them in safeguarding children. An average score of 8/10 for pharmacist knowledge and 7.7/10 for confidence was recorded for knowing when to refer suspision of a safeguarding issues. The correlation of knowledge and confidence was statistically significant (P ˂ 0.01). However, knowledge and confidence of where to refer a safeguarding issue were only 7/10 and 6.9/10, respectively. Only 20/125 pharmacists had referred a safeguarding concern.
Conclusion: It is apparent that the training for pharmacists regarding the safeguarding of children needs to be improved. The application of advanced pharmacist training and the opportunity to include the teaching of safeguarding issues into universities offers positive benefits regarding pharmacists' knowledge and confidence towards the handling, management and reporting of child maltreatment.
Keywords: Child maltreatment; Confidence; Knowledge; Pharmacist; Safeguarding children; Training, prevention.
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