Evaluation of the knowledge, attitude and the practice of pharmacovigilance among the interns and doctors in a tertiary level care teaching hospital in Northern India

Background: Adverse drug reaction (ADR) is defined by world health organization (WHO) as “a response to a drug, which is noxious and unintended, and which occurs at doses normally used in man for the prophylaxis, diagnosis or therapy of disease or for the modification of physiological function. The objective of this study was investigating the knowledge, attitudes and practices of doctors and interns to ADR reporting and reasons for underreporting of ADRs.Methods: It was a questionnaire-based, cross-sectional study. Questionnaires was designed, validated by doing a pilot study, administered to doctors and interns working in a teaching hospital with an ADR monitoring center. This questionnaire was administered to randomly select 500 faculty members, interns and the resident doctors for inclusion in the study, out of which only 209 responded. The study was approved by institutional ethics committee, government medical college Patiala. Only those who gave their consent to participate were included in the study. The data was analysed by using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) statistical software, version 20.Results: Only 20 % faculty members and 51% interns were aware of AMC in our institute. Legal inquiry/action involved for reporting an ADR was the main worry while reporting an ADR for faculty member (68%). Lack of time to report ADR was the main reason given by Interns (22%) and not knowing to whom and where to report was the main reason given by Interns PGs (40%). Awareness of postgraduate residents (90%) was overall better than faculty and interns.Conclusions: There is a great need to create awareness and to promote the reporting of ADR amongst interns and doctors, which will lay a solid foundation for these healthcare professionals to be involved in quality pharmacovigilance