Pharmacy and Holistic Care: An exploratory scoping review

Abstract: The purpose of this research was to explore pharmacy and the role of pharmacists with regard to holistic care within clinical settings and pharmacy curriculum. Method: A PICO search was used to search for relevant articles. A scoping literature review of interventions was preformed utilising five major databases. Articles were culled for duplicates and relevance. Results: Of the 6,708 articles initially found, 86 were identified as relevant. Following a further revision however, only 12 articles were specifically relevant to the topic. Articles were filtered by publication date and thematically coded. Conclusion: There exists very little published research with regard to pharmacy/ pharmacists and holistic care. The available literature however, indicates that holistic care can play an important role in pharmacy for the care of patients and that including education around holistic care early in the pharmaceutical curriculum could be important for clinical practice.