An educational intervention to assess knowledge and attitude of pharmacovigilance among under graduate medical students in a medical college of Western Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Introduction: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are adverse consequences of drug therapy. So, proper monitoring of ADRs is a necessity. Under reporting of ADRs is a common problem in Pharmacovigilance Programme of India. The active participation of health care professionals in the Pharmacovigilance Programme can improve the ADR reporting. In order to improve the reporting rate and successful running of Pharmacovigilance Programme and also prevent underreporting of ADRs, it is important to improve the knowledge, attitude of the healthcare professionals regarding ADR reporting and Pharmacovigilance. The best time to do it is during the under graduate study period. Hence, this study was designed to assess the impact of an education intervention on the knowledge and attitude of pharmacovigilance among undergraduate medical students of Subharti Medical College and Hospital Meerut, U.P, India. Material and Methods: This was prospective observational questionnaire based study. The study was a pre designed questionnaire based study which is structured to obtain information on the knowledge of the ADRs reporting, and the attitudes towards the reporting. The study tool was a modified pre designed questionnaire. A pre-post intervention questionnaire –based study was conducted among undergraduate medical students of Subharti medical college and hospital Meerut. A 16 item pretested pharmacovigilance questionnaire (ten and six questions for assessing knowledge and attitude respectively) was used before and after an educational intervention among 100 undergraduate medical students of Subharti Medical College and Hospital. For each correct answer a score of 1 was given whereas the scoring for wrong answer/ non attempted question was 0. The knowledge and attitude score for pre and post educational intervention were analyzed by Wilcoxon rank-sum test. The Software R version 2.6_2 was used to analyze pre and post intervention data. The assessment of knowledge and attitude mean scores before and after education intervention was done by paired t test. Results: A significant difference was found for most of the knowledge related questions(question 1 to 10 except 8) between before and after educational intervention (p<0.001). A significant difference was not found for question 8 (What does PvPI stands for) between before and after educational intervention (P>0.05). A significant difference was also found for most of the attitude related questions (question 11 to 16 except 12 and 15) between before and after educational intervention (p<0.05). A significant difference (p<0.001) was also found in assessment of knowledge mean scores before and after the educational intervention. Educational intervention had improved the knowledge significantly which was supported by an increase in knowledge mean score from 5.47 to 8.88 after the educational intervention. A significant difference (p=0.001) was also noted in assessment of attitude mean scores before and after the educational intervention. Educational intervention had also improved the attitude significantly which was supported by an increase in attitude mean score from 5.80 to 5.98 after the educational intervention. Conclusion: The present study findings showed that knowledge and attitude scores of pharmacovigilance were increased following an educational intervention among undergraduate medical students. The study findings also suggested that training on pharmacovigilance and adverse drug reactions tends to have a positive impact on knowledge and attitude among medical undergraduate students of Subharti Medical College and Hospital, Meerut, U.P, India.