Background: Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) can lead to minor inconveniences to severe health risks, impacting individuals and national economies. Spontaneous reporting, where mainly healthcare workers voluntarily report ADEs, is a primary method for reporting but underreporting is the major challenge here. Thus, this study was initiated to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of ADE reporting among healthcare workers of a teaching hospital in Gujarat.
Material and methods: It was a Google form-based cross-sectional study containing 15 questions (9 of knowledge, 5 of attitude, 1 of practice). These were circulated among healthcare workers via WhatsApp. Collected data were extracted in MS Excel for descriptive analysis.
Results: A total of 215 responses were received of which 80.9% of participants knew the definition of pharmacovigilance and 62.3% of participants knew who could report the ADEs. Only 2.33% of participants could correctly answer about where to report the ADEs. Nearly 81.86% of the participants agreed that reporting is their professional responsibility and 83.72% of the participants believed that reporting could make a significant difference in patient safety. The large number of participants (81.86%) favored adding pharmacovigilance in the curriculum of all healthcare workers. On enquiring about the reasons of underreporting, the most common answers were difficult to identify the ADEs (48.8%), lack of time (48.4%), not knowing how to report (40.5%).
Conclusion: Appropriate knowledge and positive attitude with poor practice towards ADE reporting were found in participants. Regular training and reinforcement among healthcare workers are needed to overcome that for the success of the PvPI.
Key words: Pharmacovigilance, Adverse Drug Events (ADEs), Knowledge, Attitude, Practices
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