Practices and Barriers towards Pharmacovigilance and Adverse Drug Reporting among Intern Pharmacists in Nigeria

Background: The practice of Pharmacovigilance (PV) and Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) reporting is very necessary to ensure adequate safety of all drugs in use and is an integral component of post marketing surveillance. Pharmacist, including interns are at a central position in carrying out this important function.

Objectives: This study sought to assess the practice of pharmacovigilance and adverse drug reaction reporting and the perceived barriers towards its implementation among pharmacist interns in Nigeria.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional study among pharmacist interns in Nigeria. The 18-item semi-structured questionnaires were administered online using simple random sampling with the snowballing technique to recruit the participants and the results were analyzed with IBM SPSS version 25. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data. The chi-square test was used to evaluate associations.

Results: A total of 450 pharmacist interns participated in this study. The practice of PV and ADR reporting is poor among the respondents, less than 40% of the participants have ever reported ADR before, while only 29.1% have reported ADR since starting their internship program. Only 35.8% said “yes” to documenting ADR. Verbal information (61.1%) is the most widely used method of reporting ADR. Lack of cohesion among healthcare professionals, unavailability of feedback from relevant authorities, and fear of being wrong are the most reported barriers towards PV and ADR reporting among the participants. This is a correlation between the number of months spent in internship program and the practice of PV by the participants. ‘Fear of being wrong’ is an essential barrier to PV and ADR reporting among participants in tertiary hospitals (86.0%).

Conclusion: The practice of pharmacovigilance is poor among the participants. Many barriers also affect ADR reporting among the interns. Measures should be taken to encourage ADR reporting and the reported barriers should be reviewed to improve pharmacovigilance activities.