Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Hospital Pharmacists in Central China Towards Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting: A Multicenter Cross‐Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Healthcare professionals’ knowledge and attitudes towards adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and ADR reporting play a significant role in pharmacovigilance. This study aims to investigate the gap between knowledge and practice in ADR reporting among hospital pharmacists.Methods: This study is a multi-center, cross-sectional study based on a questionnaire survey. A semi-structured questionnaire was developed including knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) towards ADR reporting. From October to November 2021, questionnaires were filled out on the internet by hospital pharmacists from a central province of China. The data analysis used a one-way ANOVA to analyze the differences between the pharmacist’s characteristics and knowledge and attitude, respectively. The ordinal logistic regression method was used to analyze the predictors of practice.Results: A total of 1,026 valid questionnaires from 512 medical institutions were collected. It was found that 88.8% of participants have a clear understanding of the ADR definition, while 59.6% of them have misunderstandings about the reporting time of new and serious adverse reactions. Most pharmacists showed positive attitudes towards ADR reporting. Higher education background, higher professional title, attending training, and clinical pharmacist resulted in higher knowledge scores. Higher education background, shorter working years, attending training, and from non-tertiary hospital related to higher attitude scores. In terms of practice, age, hospital type, working years, training, and pharmacist type all have significant associations with practice scores. Pharmacists’ knowledge score and attitude score were significant predictors of practice score with OR being 1.19 (95% CI: 1.06, 1.33) and 1.04 (95% CI: 1.005, 1.07).Conclusion: Although most hospital pharmacists showed positive attitudes towards ADR reporting, their knowledge and practice were still insufficient. Hospital pharmacists’ knowledge and attitude are associated with their practice towards ADR reporting. The training had a significant impact on the pharmacist’s knowledge, attitude, and practice.

A Survey of Pharmacists and Other Healthcare Professionals in Vietnam: Factors Influencing Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Reporting Adverse Drug Reactions

“…Attitude is a driving force behind ADR reporting, and thus a positive attitude can encourage timely ADR reporting. 52,64 Our study found that participants aged 40 or younger were more negative toward ADR reporting compared to those over 40 years old (P = .008). This could be due to older healthcare workers having more experience with ADR cases, and thus a better understanding of the harm ADRs can cause to patients, in addition to having undertaken more training in ADR than their younger counterparts.…”

“…This could be due to older healthcare workers having more experience with ADR cases, and thus a better understanding of the harm ADRs can cause to patients, in addition to having undertaken more training in ADR than their younger counterparts. 52 Additionally, pharmacists were more negative toward ADR reporting than were doctors ( P = .002) or nurses ( P = .008). 47 It has been reported that many pharmacists feel that ADR reporting adds to their workload and is time-consuming.…”

“…Several studies have shown that hospital pharmacists play an important role in detecting and reporting ADRs and preventing related incidents. 52,65 Additionally, pharmacists possess clinical knowledge, and their exchanges with physicians and patients can promote a better understanding of suspected ADRs. This study suggests the need for training and education on ADR reporting, particularly for pharmacists, as well as for those with intermediate/college education levels.…”

“…16 Although the role of pharmacists in national pharmacovigilance systems may vary worldwide, it is widely recognized that reporting ADRs is an important part of their professional responsibility and that they have a positive attitude toward ADR reporting. 52 However, many studies have shown that there are still significant gaps in pharmacists’ knowledge around ADR reporting, particularly in countries where their role in healthcare is limited. 48,49,53 Our study also found that pharmacists had poorer knowledge of ADR reporting compared to medical practitioners ( P = .015) and nurses ( P = .009), in agreement with findings from the Philippines 54 and Jordan.…”

Healthcare professionals’ knowledge, attitude and practice towards National Centralized Drug Procurement policy in central China: A cross-sectional study

“…Frontiers in Pharmacology frontiersin.org coping strategies (Zhang et al, 2020). The difference of knowledge level has great significance on HCPs' practice level, which indicates education intervention is one strategy for better practice (Gidey et al, 2020;Hu et al, 2022). Certain attitudes of HCPs also have a great impact on behavior: HCPs who agree that NCDP policy can reduce the burden of chronic disease patients and alleviate the contradiction between doctors and patients have higher degree of satisfaction to the policy and are more inclined to have better practice.…”