Urgent need to modernize pharmacovigilance education in healthcare curricula: review of the literature

Abstract

ObjectivesPharmacovigilance education is essential since adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are a serious health problem and contribute to unnecessary patient burden and hospital admissions. Healthcare professionals have little awareness of pharmacovigilance and ADR reporting, and only few educational interventions had durable effects on this awareness. Our future healthcare providers should therefore acquire an adequate set of pharmacovigilance competencies to rationally prescribe, distribute, and monitor drugs. We investigated the pharmacovigilance and ADR-reporting competencies of healthcare students to identify educational interventions that are effective in promoting pharmacovigilance.MethodsThe PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and ERIC databases were searched using the terms “pharmacovigilance,” “students,” and “education.”.ResultsTwenty-five cross-sectional and 14 intervention studies describing mostly medical and pharmacy students were included. Intentions and attitudes on ADR reporting were overall positive, although most students felt inadequately prepared, missed the training on this topic, and lacked basic knowledge. Although nearly all students observed ADRs during clinical rounds, only a few had actually been involved in reporting an ADR. Educational interventions were predominately lectures, sometimes accompanied by small interactive working groups. Most interventions resulted in a direct increase in knowledge with an unknown long-term effect. Real-life learning initiatives have shown that healthcare students are capable of contributing to patient care while increasing their ADR-reporting skills and knowledge.ConclusionsThere is an urgent need to improve and innovate current pharmacovigilance education for undergraduate healthcare students. By offering real-life pharmacovigilance training, students will increase their knowledge and awareness but can also assist current healthcare professionals to meet their pharmacovigilance obligations.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s00228-018-2500-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Impact assessment of pharmacovigilance-related educational intervention on nursing students’ knowledge, attitude and practice: A pre-post study

“…A recent review supported the idea that it is crucial to improve and innovate current pharmacovigilance education in undergraduate health profession students. [23] This study had few limitations. The study only focused on one nursing school and the sample size was small and hence the findings cannot be generalized to the entire nursing student population of the country.…”

Adverse drug event reporting by pharmacists: a systematic literature review

“…Fortunately, this obstacle can be modified by introducing more topics related to ADE reporting and drug safety within pharmacy curriculum, providing continuing education programmes and training as suggested by several studies included in this review. A recent literature review about pharmacovigilance education showed that pharmacovigilance interventions can range from short PowerPoint presentations and several training and interactive workshops . Intervention types included providing theoretical information about ADR reporting, identification of ADRs, medication safety modules, detection of ADRs and lectures on completing MedWatch forms .…”

“…[86] Intervention types included providing theoretical information about ADR reporting, identification of ADRs, medication safety modules, detection of ADRs and lectures on completing MedWatch forms. [86] Other barriers that were frequently mentioned can also be linked to lack of knowledge, such as uncertainty that a specific drug is responsible to a particular drug reaction, and ADE is too trivial and well known to report. Yet, in reality, even, suspected ADE and all possible types of undesirable effects associated with a drug can be reported.…”

Pharmacist's Practice of Reporting of Adverse Drug Reactions in Saudi Arabia

“…The drug regulatory body needs to increase attention and focus on targeting community pharmacists and continue attempts to hold educational campaigns and workshops for all healthcare providers. [13,14] SFDA has developed a mobile application that provides the user with notification for any warnings and alerts, awareness messages regarding food, medications and medical devices in addition to a special section for pharmacovigilance in order to make the reporting process more accessible. This mobile app can ease the access to the electronic ADR form, obviating the need to go to the main page of the SFDA website and start a search within a site.…”