Background: Adverse drug reactions contribute to excessive health care cost through increased patients morbidity and mortality. Thus there is an urgent need to create awareness among medical practitioners towards ADR monitoring and reporting.
This study aims on assessment of factors affecting the reporting of adverse drug reactions among medical practitioners at Bugando medical centre.
The study was conducted at Bugando medical centre. The study population was the medical practitioners including specialists, medical doctors, pharmacists, pharmaceutical technicians, registered nurses, intern pharmacists and doctors. The study design was a descriptive study. Data analysis was done by using SPSS version 20.
76% of the responders had a proper knowledge about adverse of drug reactions, 93.2% had a good attitude towards the reporting of adverse drug reactions, 66.8% had a positive perception towards the reporting of adverse drug reactions. They also reported on the factors which discouraged them to report file 84% was due to unavailability of the reporting forms in their places of work, 15% was due to busy schedule and 12% was due to concern that the reaction is due to an ADR.
It was concluded that all these gaps should be filled through increase in provision of knowledge and training at working places and improving all the factors which could discourage the reporting of ADR like making sure that the forms are available all the time.
Wurzburg Road 35, BMC Premises, Post Code: 33102: P. O. Box 1464, Mwanza – Tanzania: Phone: +255 28 298 3384: Fax: +255 28 298 3386: Email: vc@bugando.ac.tz : www.bugando.ac.tz