A cross-sectional study on knowledge, attitude, and practice of health-care professionals about adverse drug reactions reporting in a tertiary care teaching hospital of southern Rajasthan

Abstract

Background: Adverse drug reaction (ADR) reporting is the integrity of healthcare professionals (HCPs) to counteract fatal outcomes aroused by the use of medications during therapy. The underreporting of ADRs imposes major problems globally. The pharmacovigilance program plays a key role in detecting and preventing ADRs. Targeting the upcoming younger generation of HCPs and sensitizing them towards ADR reporting in their clinical practice is essential. Aims and Objectives: The main objective of our study is to measure the knowledge, attitude, and practice of interns and postgraduates at our institute towards ADR reporting and pharmacovigilance. Materials and Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study conducted on interns and postgraduates of a tertiary care teaching hospital in Udaipur, Rajasthan. A set of 28 standard questions related to knowledge, attitude, and practice of pharmacovigilance and ADR reporting were distributed among 106 students after taking the ethical approval from the institute. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS (version 20) software in percentage. The Chi-square test (χ2) was used, and P < 0.01* was considered significant statistically. Results: In our study, we found most of the participants were in 21–30 age groups (84.19%); male participants were (67%) in comparison with females (33%). The majority of interns showed their interest in participation (66%) rather than postgraduates (34%) in this study. The overall knowledge (14.645, P = 0.01), attitude (14.64, P = 0.01), and practice (35.712, P = 0.01) of HCPs were found to be significant. Conclusion: We conclude from this study that both interns and postgraduates have good knowledge of ADR reporting, but interns lack practice in their daily duties due to fear of heavy paper work, and postgraduates lack attitude towards ADR reporting due to heavy duty schedules. Most of the participants, i.e., interns and postgraduates, felt ADR reporting was their primary responsibility along with patient safety. Recurrent training and sensitization of upcoming medical professionals about ADR reporting will impart better patient compliance and eradicate fatal outcomes. They also suggest a separate working body needs to keep by institutions to collect the ADR reports during their busy duty schedules.