An Educational Intervention To Improve Nurses Reporting of Adverse Drug Reactions

Abstract

AN EduCATioNAl iNTErVENTioN To improVE NurSES rEporTiNg of AdVErSE drug rEACTioNS S. Marquez; M.T. Herdeiro; and I. Ribeiro-Vaz University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal; and Northern Pharmacovigilance Centre, Porto, Portugal Introduction: Adverse drug reactions (ADR) are an important cause of mortality and morbidity leading to additional costs with health. Drug safety data before commercialization is limited and incomplete, which is the reason why pharmacovigilance is important. ADR reporting system is efficient in drug safety monitoring. Nurses can have an important role in ADR reporting due to their daily activities of drugs administration (including vaccines). However, among these professionals, there a high rate of underreporting. Based on the reasons proposed by Inman for underreporting ADR, it was concluded that the main obstacles to ADR reporting among nurses were indifference (the belief that a single case cannot contribute to medical knowledge) and the lack of knowledge about the pharmacovigilance system. The aim of this study is to evaluate the quantitative and qualitative increase of ADR reports by nurses after an educational intervention. Methods: A quasiexperimental study was performed in nurses working in primary care in Braga district, Portugal. One hundred thirteen individuals were placed in the intervention group while the control group included 590 nurses. Two educational interventions were performed to nurses working in primary care in ACES Cavado II (intervention group) that focused on the problem of adverse drug reaction, the impact on public health and spontaneous reporting. Statistical analysis were based on absolute and relative frequencies. Results: Between January 2013 and September 2014 the Northern Pharmacovigilance Centre received 8 reports/100 nurses from the intervention group and 5 reports/100 nurses from control group. Conclusions: The educational intervention increased 1.6 times the number of reports during the study period. The second intervention had more impact than the first one. There was no significant increase in the quality of ADR reports in the intervention group. In the second intervention the number of reports increased only at the intervention day.