Abstract
Adverse drug reactions are major global public health problems and an important cause of mortality. Problems related to medicines safety can emerge from real-life medication use due to increasing access to complex treatment of concomitant infectious and noncommunicable diseases, hence leading to a higher prevalence of drug-related problems. The objective of this review was to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice of adverse drug reaction reporting among health care professionals in Ethiopia. Relevant literatures were searched from Google Scholar, PubMed, Hinari, Web of Science, Scopus, and Science Direct using inclusion and exclusion criteria. From 133 searched studies, 13 studies were reviewed. The knowledge and attitude of health care professionals towards adverse drug reaction reporting ranged from 22.68% -60.33% and 47.22% -67.14%, with averages of 41.50% and 57.18%, respectively. While 46.93% encountered adverse drug reactions and 41.8% reported in the last 12 months. One-third (34.15%) of health care professionals do not know how to report adverse drug reactions. Fearing to report, uncertainty about the adverse drug reaction, concern about reporting generating extra work, thinking that one report does not make any difference, nonavailability of reporting forms, and lack of feedback from regulatory authority were the stated reasons for underreporting. We conclude that the knowledge, attitude, and practice of health care professionals towards spontaneous ADR reporting were low. Conducting awareness and educational training and implementation of electronic reporting can improve the ADR reporting practice.
Highlights
An adverse drug reaction (ADR) [1] is a response to a drug that is noxious, unintended, and which occurs at doses normally used in humans for prophylaxis, diagnosis, or therapy of disease or the modification of physiologic function [2]
Studies were included in the review if they aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice of health care professionals toward ADR reporting
In the area of pharmaceutical care, ADR monitoring mainly focuses on the detection, management, and reporting of ADR of drugs that may result from drugs that are taken in the normal dose for prevention, prophylaxis, or treatment [36]
Summary
An adverse drug reaction (ADR) [1] is a response to a drug that is noxious, unintended, and which occurs at doses normally used in humans for prophylaxis, diagnosis, or therapy of disease or the modification of physiologic function [2]. Problems related to medicine safety can emerge from real-life medication use. Postmarketing monitoring is, an important step to detecting medicine-related problems that were not possible to identify during the pre-marketing phases [4]. ADR are major global public health problems [5] and an important cause of mortality [6]. ADR rank among the top 10 leading causes of mortality [7]. The rate of fatal ADR in patients presenting to a hospital has been reported to range from 0.1% to 10% [8]. Studies conducted in developed countries reported that the rate of fatal ADR ranged from 0.05% to 3% of all patients admitted due to an ADR [9, 10]. A recent review of studies found that the median proportion of ADR resulting in mortality in developing and developed countries was 1.8% and 1.7%, respectively [11]
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