Perspectives and Challenges in Oral Pharyngeal Cancer Screening Practices of Primary Care Providers—A Preliminary Study

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to identify the barriers preventing primary care providers from performing regular oral cancer screening, and to understand the challenges they face in integrating oral cancer screening into their annual examination protocols. Method: Sequential exploratory mixed methods were used. Both qualitative and quantitative data from primary care providers working at Nebraska Medicine were obtained. One-on-one in-depth interviews were performed to identify primary care providers’ perceptions and challenges in performing oral cancer screening. Themes identified in the qualitative phase guided the development of the survey questionnaire. The survey was emailed to all the primary care providers (n = 100) listed on the publicly accessible Nebraska Medicine website. Results: The response rate was 34%. Approximately 60% of the participants reported currently performing oral cancer screening; however, only 3.8% stated they performed comprehensive oral cancer screening consistently. Forty-eight percent of the providers identified time as the biggest challenge. Over 35.3% indicated they screened patients with a history of tobacco or alcohol use. Conclusions: With the limitations of this exploratory study, approximately half of the participants identified lack of time as their primary challenge in performing oral cancer screening and lack of knowledge as their second main obstacle. Very few performed comprehensive oral cancer screening, with visual examination being the most conducted step.