A cross sectional study to assess knowledge, attitude and practices of pharmacovigilance by interns in a tertiary care hospital in North Karnataka

Background: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are an important contributor to morbidity and mortality burden in modern health care system. Continuous monitoring of drug after entering into market is necessary as it helps in improving care and safety of patient. In India, there is ongoing National Pharmacovigilance program to monitor ADRs. However, there is marked under-reporting of ADRs due to various reasons. Hence this study was taken to evaluate the knowledge, attitude and practices by the next generation doctors i.e., interns working in a tertiary care hospital, Bagalkot, Karnataka.Methods: After ethics committee approval, a pretested questionnaire containing 15 questions was given to 80 interns. Finally, 60 sets were used for analysis, as 20 were incomplete.Results: In our study it showed interns have good knowledge about pharmacovigilance as 67.4% correct responses were seen in knowledge domain and similarly 79% responses related to attitude were correct. However, there was a marked difference in the practice of ADR reporting as only 9.6% participants have reported an ADR. This study highlights that in-spite of having knowledge and awareness there was lesser ADR reporting practices. Major reasons for hindering ADR reporting found were difficulty in identifying an ADR, lack of time, not knowing how and where to report, lack of incentives and no compulsion.Conclusions: Under reporting issues can be addressed by conducting more educational activities especially at undergraduate and intern’s level, including continuous medical educations, workshops, problem-based learning about pharmacovigilance in detail in curriculum. These activities will increase reporting culture and sensitize interns to inculcate it in their future clinical practice also