Awareness, Attitude, and Practice of Pharmacovigilance among Health Care Professionals in Nigeria: Survey in a Teaching Hospital

Background and Objectives: Pharmacovigilance is central to the control of the menace of adverse drugs reactions. Despite the fact that development of policy and practice framework to improve patients’ safety partly rely on availability of authentic data on pharmacovigilance activities, knowledge about pharmacovigilance activities among healthcare professionals in Nigeria is limited. To help fill this gap, this study explored the awareness, attitude and practice of pharmacovigilance activities among the healthcare professionals in the Nigerian Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional survey was carried out among healthcare professionals in the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi. The participants were doctors, pharmacists, nurses and health records officers employed in the teaching hospital. The sample was selected using stratified random sampling. A structured, self-administered questionnaire was used as the survey instrument. Key informant interview was also conducted among hospital’s administrative officers using standard interviewer guide. Descriptive statistics were calculated for the demographic variables. Quantitative data were compared using inferential statistics. Findings: Low level of awareness among the healthcare professionals about pharmacovigilance activities was observed. About half of them, 130 (50.4%), stated that they were not aware of the Nigerian National Pharmacovigilance tool that is used for documenting and reporting of adverse drug reactions. Only about one tenth of the respondents, 35 (13.7%), mentioned that they use this tool for documenting and reporting of adverse drug reactions whereas the majority of them, 220 (86.3%), stated that they had not used the tool. Conclusions: The study indicated that the healthcare professionals in Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching hospital, NAUTH (Nnewi) have low awareness about pharmacovigilance. There is also low frequencyof utilization of the Nigeria NPV tool for documentation and reporting of ADRs. Our findings highlight the need for educational and managerial interventions to improve ADRs monitoring and reporting within an all-inclusive pharmacovigilance system in this country.