Pharmacist's Awareness and Knowledge of Reporting Adverse Drug Reactions in Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT

Objectives: Pharmacovigilance is considered a useful tool in detecting, assessing, understanding and preventing Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to ensure the safety of medications and protect consumers from ADRs. Consequently, the progression and expansion of pharmacovigilance is urgent for safe and effective clinical practice; therefore, in this study, we aimed to compare the awareness and knowledge of the community and hospital pharmacists toward reporting ADRs in different regions of Saudi Arabia. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted from January 2016 to March 2016 in Saudi Arabia. A validated and structured questionnaire was distributed by hand or via Internet to 263 hospital and community pharmacists. The questionnaire collected pharmacists’ demographic information and pharmacists’ understanding and knowledge of the pharmacovigilance system and reporting of ADRs. Results: A total of 263 pharmacists responded to the questionnaire with 208 (79.09%) pharmacists from hospital pharmacy sites and 55 (20.91%) pharmacists from community pharmacy responding to the questionnaire. There is a significant difference in the pharmacovigilance concept (p<0.05) between the hospital and community pharmacists. Most community pharmacists were unfamiliar with the existence of a pharmacovigilance center in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, community pharmacists were unaware of where they could get an ADR reporting form, but hospital pharmacists were aware of this (p<0.05). Conclusion: The results of this study demonstrated that pharmacists who work at hospitals among different regions in Saudi Arabia had a higher awareness of the pharmacovigilance system than that of community pharmacists who worked at the community pharmacy.