జర్నల్ ఆఫ్ ఫార్మకోవిజిలెన్స్

నైరూప్య

Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Health Professionals towards Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting and Factors Associated with Reporting

Welelaw Necho Mulatu and Alemayehu Worku

Purpose: Spontaneous reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) is a significant activity to improve the safety of medicines and health care professionals are pivotal players. This study aims to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of health professionals towards an adverse drug reaction reporting and factors associated with reporting.
Methods: Institutional based cross sectional study complemented with qualitative study was conducted from May to November, 2012 in Amhara region. Using a two stage cluster sampling technique, 708 participants were selected for the study. A pretested self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. An in-depth interview was used to collect qualitative data. Multivariate binary logistic regression was used for the analysis.
Results: It was found that none of the respondents mentioned the national ADR reporting guideline as their source of information on ADR reporting. Based on the overall knowledge score, about two thirds 411 (65.8%) of the respondents had insufficient knowledge on the ADR reporting system. A very small proportion of respondents 101(16.2%) had ever reported ADR they encountered during their professional practice. Being participated in ADR related training [AOR: 1.82(1.10, 3.10) 95%CI], being introduced with ADR during college or university education and level of knowledge [AOR: 5.99(3.61, 9.94)95%CI] are found to be significantly associated with ADR reporting.
Conclusion: The level of knowledge towards ADR reporting is low. ADR reporting practice is also low among health professionals. Hence, strategies need to be devised to create awareness among health professionals towards ADR reporting.