Studies on the measurement of pharmacovigilance knowledge, attitude and behavior among pharmacists and increasing reporting effectiveness

Adverse drug reactions are an important problem threatening public health. Therefore, close monitoring of drug safety and reporting of adverse effects in the post-marketing period have great importance. It is known that adverse effects are not adequately reported, especially by healthcare professionals, and this constitutes an important obstacle in the development of the pharmacovigilance system. As the pharmacist is the most accessible healthcare professional, they play a major role in monitoring drug safety and reporting adverse effects. The aim of this study is to examine the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of pharmacy pharmacists in Turkey about pharmacovigilance. For this purpose, 737 community pharmacists participated in our study with the online survey application. The questionnaire consists of questions aimed at obtaining information about pharmacists' socio-demographic information, their knowledge of pharmacovigilance and other types of vigilance, and their attitudes towards reporting adverse drug reactions. As a result of our study, it has been observed that the pharmacovigilance knowledge level of pharmacists who are new to community pharmacist, those who are younger and those with a higher education level are also higher. As the education level increases, the knowledge level of pharmacovigilance, cosmetovigilance, phytovigilance, pharmacovigilance for biological drugs and biosimilars, good pharmacovigilance practices and medical device warning system also increases. 19.8% of the pharmacists participating in our study have reported adverse effects so far, while 80.2% have not reported any. Among the factors that affect pharmacists' reporting of adverse effects; the most common factors are being unsure of adverse effects, well-known side effects, limited time, not being able to access sufficient information for reporting, difficulty in the reporting process, and not knowing how to report. According to the data obtained from our study, adequate adverse effects are not reported by pharmacists in Turkey. In order to enable community pharmacists to actively report adverse effects, various innovative ways should be developed, and adverse reaction reports should be brought to a sufficient level with new methods that will save time and facilitate their reporting.