Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practices towards Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting among Health Care Professionals in Adama town Hospitals, East Shoa Zone, Ethiopia

Abstract

Adverse Drug Reactions are associated with a significant morbidity and mortality and early
detection of new and/or unusual adverse drug events and minimal patient exposure to such
events is very crucial to health care. Lack of knowledge, giving less value for the importance of
Adverse Drug Reactions reporting and not well documented research in the developing countries
were problems related with Adverse Drug Reactions among health professionals.
To assess the knowledge, attitude and practices on Adverse Drug Reactions reporting among
health care professionals in Adama town Hospitals, East Shoa Zone , Ethiopia
A cross sectional study was conducted from June 8-20, 2017 among 183 health care
Professionals. Data was collected through a self- administered questionnaire from health
professionals selected by simple random sampling method. Finally, data was cleaned and
checked for its completeness; coded and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences
(SPSS) version 20. Descriptive analysis like frequency, proportion, mean and SD were applied.
Overall, 62(33.9%) of the respondents had good knowledge on Adverse Drug Reactions
reporting with there were significant differences on the level of knowledge among the health
professionals. Out of 86 (47.0%) respondents who had encountered with Adverse Drug
Reactions, 49(57.0%) had reported. In addition, 86.3% have positive attitude towards Adverse
Drug Reactions reporting. The reasons why the participants not reporting Adverse Drug
Reactions were lack of reporting form 68.8%, time consuming 28.1%, reporting process creates
an additional workload was 34.7%.
In spite of the poor knowledge among the respondents, the study showed that majority of the
health professionals had positive attitude towards Adverse Drug Reactions reporting. But there
are gaps in practice of Adverse Drug Reactions reporting among health care professionals
working in Adama town Hospitals; only few of them had ever reported Adverse Drug Reactions they encountered. These gaps need to be filled by intensive training and awareness creations on Adverse Drug Reactions reporting and pharmacovigillance at various levels of healthcare system by concerned bodies.