Knowledge, attitudes and practice of pharmacovigilance amongst community pharmacists: a case study of Ogun State, Nigeria

Background: Medicinal products are among the accomplished successes of the modern health, providing society with enormous benefits. However, medicinal product's known or unknown adverse drug reactions are contributing to deterioration of quality health and wellbeing. Core medicine safety information is generated during clinical trial phase with limitations to the detection of all adverse drug reaction (ADR) due to its restricted period. Pharmacovigilance focuses on detecting and reporting ADRs; hitherto, community pharmacists, often the first point of patients' contact, are preeminent in detecting and reporting ADRs.

Objectives: To assess the knowledge, attitude and the application of pharmacovigilance amongst community pharmacists.

Methods: Cross-sectional survey was conducted among community pharmacists in Ogun State. Data were obtained with a 33 - item self-administered questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive and Chi-square statistics.

Results: Pharmacists' knowledge of pharmacovigilance and reporting of ADRs was adequate as 78.1 % soundly understood pharmacovigilance definition and 73.1 % are knowledgeable about reporting ADRs. The existence of pharmacovigilance centers was confirmed by 81.3 % respondents. The attitudes to pharmacovigilance were positive as 99.6 % believed that the role and utility of pharmacists in ADRs reporting is crucial to their practice. However, 51.9 % had a challenge with time and 96.3 % claimed easy accessibility to reporting forms would facilitate reporting. Age and years of experience of respondents were statistically significant with the knowledge, attitude and practice of pharmacovigilance amongst pharmacists.

Conclusion: There was a relatively good knowledge of pharmacovigilance, and positive attitudes towards ADR reporting; however, time constraints and easy access to reporting forms were barriers to active reporting.