Physicians’ Understanding and Practices of Pharmacovigilance: Qualitative Experience from a Lower Middle-Income Country

Abstract

Developed countries have established pharmacovigilance systems to monitor the safety of medicines. However, in the developing world, drug monitoring and reporting are facing enormous challenges. The current study was designed to explore the challenges related to the understanding and practices of physicians in reporting adverse drug reactions in Lahore, Pakistan. Through the purposive sampling technique, 13 physicians were interviewed. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed for a thematic content analysis. The thematic content analysis yielded six major themes: (1) Familiarity with medication safety and adverse drug reaction (ADR) concept, (2) Knowledge about pharmacovigilance activities, (3) Practices related to ADR reporting, (4) Barriers impeding ADR reporting, (5) Acknowledgement of the pharmacist’s role, and (6) System change needs. The majority of the physicians were unaware of the ADR reporting system; however, they were ready to accept practice changes if provided with the required skills and training. A lack of knowledge, time, and interest, a fear of legal liability, poor training, inadequate physicians’ and other healthcare professionals’ communication, and most importantly lack of a proper reporting system were reported as barriers. The findings based on emerging themes can be used to establish an effective pharmacovigilance system in Pakistan. Overall, physicians reported a positive attitude towards practice changes, provided the concerned authorities support and take interest in this poorly acknowledged but most needed component of the healthcare system.

Risk Factors Associated With Medication Errors Among Patients Suffering From Chronic Disorders

“…Our findings are in line with the previous literature. Hussain et al, in their study, found that prescription from practitioners who had seen the patients with potential DDIs before contained less errors and DDIs (42). Results of another study showed that prescriptions from a specialist contained less DDIs than prescriptions from general practitioners (43).…”

Exploring healthcare professionals’ knowledge, attitude, and practices towards pharmacovigilance: a cross-sectional survey

“…The National Pharmacovigilance Centre (NPC) is established under the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) [12]. With reference to the establishment of the NPC in the country, although the DRAP has launched an online reporting form for all HCPs nationwide, but the reporting from HCPs is very low [13][14][15][16].…”

Physician’s Practice of Adverse Drug Reaction in Saudi Arabia

“…At the same time, the majority did not even send any ADR during their practice period despite the ADR reporting system's vital opinions, which reliable with previous studies. [9,10,13,14,18,19,[21][22][23]25,26,32,33,[44][45][46][47][48][49] Further, it might be the ADR not readily obtainable at the front medical disk or nursing station at the wards or clinics. The ADR reporting system was incompetently implemented with most practice elements related to inadequate knowledge of physicians of the practice or not practice or seldom doing the exercise of ADR reporting system and contained with another study.…”

“…The ADR reporting system was incompetently implemented with most practice elements related to inadequate knowledge of physicians of the practice or not practice or seldom doing the exercise of ADR reporting system and contained with another study. [22,25,45] Few physicians familiar with ADR policy & procedures implementation and might practice it like aforementioned studies. [46] The inadequacy of education and training or inadequate practice at their organization facilities contributes like previous studies.…”