Pharmacovigilance of over‐the‐counter products based in community pharmacy: methodological issues from pilot work conducted in Hampshire and Grampian, UK

Abstract

Greater vigilance is required for adverse events that may be attributable to non-prescription product use. Development of pharmacovigilance models using community pharmacies is one means of systematically collecting information regarding drug safety. Further work is needed to identify a method which maximizes patient recruitment whilst maintaining acceptable follow-up rates.

Study of Natural Health Product Adverse Reactions (SONAR): Active Surveillance of Adverse Events Following Concurrent Natural Health Product and Prescription Drug Use in Community Pharmacies

“…Although not without its challenges, active surveillance in pharmacies is feasible, and markedly increases both the number and quality of AE reports in comparison to passive surveillance. [53]–[56] When comparing our results to data derived from passive surveillance, we found that the Health Canada AE database (Canada Vigilance) has a total of 1544 (median = 233.5, range = 144 in 2004 to 442 as of December 31, 2009) AE reports associated with NHP use over a five year period from passive surveillance of over 30 million Canadians, which results in a median incidence rate of approximately 0.0008% (range = 0.0005% in 2004 to 0.0015% in 2009). [57] Given that one third of Canadians report taking NHP and prescription medications concurrently, the median incidence rate of AE reports is approximately 0.0023% (range = 0.0014% in 2004 to 0.0044% in 2009).…”

Developing consensus around the pharmaceutical public health competencies for community pharmacists in Scotland

“…However, commentators such as Walker have advocated the need for a common pharmacy dataset to underpin public health activity suggesting its absence is a barrier to the development of pharmacy's role in this area [10]. The use of pharmacy health data to target health promotion measures, provide data regarding the epidemiology of minor ailments, adverse drug reactions to over the counter medication and to supplement existing data have been advocated [6,10,23,26,27]. The new community pharmacy contract in Scotland and the introduction of electronic transfer of prescriptions provides a timely opportunity to review community pharmacy's contribution to health data collection.…”

The importance of health literacy in the development of "Self Care" cards for community pharmacies in Ireland

“…Thus, highlighting the major limitation of this research - 15 From a health service researcher perspective, the collection of patient data is dependent on the staff's commitment and honesty. In Irish pharmacies, the culture of scientific evaluation is not the norm and is highlighted by the relevant dearth of research conducted in this setting.…”