Abstract:

"Background: ADRs are noxious, unexpected responses at normal doses of drugs to patients. Its effect is a burden to patients, healthcare professionals and pharmaceutical industries. These concerns are to be reported by both patients and healthcare professionals to respective authority, using specific tools. The study aims to assess the knowledge and practice of healthcare professionals towards ADR reporting.

Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in Mwanza city among healthcare professionals from 1st to 28th April 2024. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from study participants, entered and cleaned in Microsoft excel 2019. STATA version 15 was used for analysis where, descriptive statistics were presented in tables and charts while Pearson chi-square test kept significance at p<0.05.

Results: From 384 participants with mean age of 37.13 ± 11.13 years, majority had working experience of less than ten years. About 64.84% had good knowledge and 57.03% had good practice on ADR reporting. About 367(95.57%) knew what are ADR and 241(62.76%) did not get any training for ADR reporting. Majority,240(62.50%) have never reported any ADR while 232(60.42%) have ADR reporting form at their workplace. Age (p=0.002), profession (p=0.000) and working experience (p=0.001) of healthcare professionals were significant predictors of the practice of ADR reporting.

Conclusion: There is relatively poor practice of ADR reporting compared to the knowledge the healthcare professionals have. This is attributed to ignorance, lack of training, poor management system and ineffective authorities. Strategies like inclusion of pharmacovigilance course in university curriculum of all medical disciplines and doing trainings to all healthcare professionals on ADR reporting and use of available reporting tools."