Poor Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Pharmacovigilance among Health Care Professionals: A Cross-sectional Study

ABSTRACT Background As the number of drugs available in the market are increasing, there arises a need to detect their adverse drug reactions and report them on time so that further harm can be avoided. The level of underreporting of adverse drug reactions is very high. Therefore, present study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of pharmacovigilance among the various health care professionals and suggest ways to improve them. Materials and methods A cross-sectional survey was done on 215 health care personnels working in a medical college in Jaipur. They were subjected to KAP questionnaire consisted of knowledge, attitude and practice based questions, designed specifically to assess the awareness about pharmacovigilance. Results and conclusion The mean KAP scores of physicians were found to be 5.75, 4.44 and 1.75 respectively. The KAP score of postgraduate students was 5.5, 4.25 and 1.5 respectively. The KAP score of final year MBBS students was 5, 3.4, and 1.4 respectively, and that of interns was 4, 4.2 and 1.4 respectively. The KAP score of pharmacists was 3.5, 2 and 1 respectively, and that of nurses was 2.75, 2.25 and 0.8 respectively. It was found that mean score of physicians and postgraduate students was higher than interns and final year MBBS and much higher than nurses and pharmacists. Still they all fall under the poor score range to unsatisfactory score range which suggest that there is an urgent need for ongoing educational programs to train health care professionals about pharmacovigilance. How to cite this article Vohra A, Vohra R, Verma M. Poor Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Pharmacovigilance among Health Care Professionals: A Cross-sectional Study. J Mahatma Gandhi Univ Med Sci Tech 2016;1(2):42-46.