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Assessment of knowledge, practices, and barriers to pharmacovigilance among nurses at a teaching hospital, Ghana: a cross-sectional study.

Adu‑Gyamfi, Paa Kofi Tawiah; Mensah, Kwesi Boadu; Ocansey, Joseph; Moomin, Aliu; Danso, Bright Owusu; Agyapong, Frank; Arthur‑Mensah, Reginald

Authors

Paa Kofi Tawiah Adu‑Gyamfi

Kwesi Boadu Mensah

Joseph Ocansey

Bright Owusu Danso

Frank Agyapong

Reginald Arthur‑Mensah



Abstract

Background: Pharmacovigilance may be defined as the continuous monitoring of the reaction between a drug agent or combination of drugs a patient took and steps taken to prevent any associated risk. Clinical trials conducted before drug approval cannot uncover every aspect of the health hazards of approved drugs. People with carefully selected characteristics are monitored for the safety and efficacy of the drug; hence, common adverse drug reactions (ADRs) following proper use of the medication can be detected. This calls for continuous monitoring of drugs to report any undocumented ADRs during the clinical trial. The study aimed to assess the knowledge, practice, and barriers to pharmacovigilance among nurses at a teaching hospital. Methods: The study was a descriptive cross-sectional study, and a stratified sampling technique was used to select 125 nurses within the three units: medical, surgical, and pediatric wards. A structured questionnaire was developed and used for data collection based on the study's objectives and reviewed literature. Results: The majority (67.2%) of the respondents were females, and 32.8% were males. Most (71.2%) of the nurses had low knowledge of ADR reporting procedures. Also, 84.8% of the nurses knew the purpose of reporting ADRs. The purpose of ADR reporting, as perceived by respondents, was to identify safe drugs (80.8%) and calculate the incidence of ADR (75.2%). Additionally, among the nurses who reported having nursed a patient with ADRs, 52.54% stated they reported the case, while 47.46% did not report it. The most cited reason for not reporting ADRs was that nurses considered the reaction normal and commonly associated with that medicine (35.7%). In comparison, 28.5% of the nurses said they did not know they were supposed to report the adverse drug reaction. There was no statistically significant difference between ranks of nurses, ward, attending in-service training, and pharmacovigilance practice. Conclusion: In conclusion, nurses in this study had inadequate knowledge of pharmacovigilance and its reporting procedure. The study found that most nurses fear that reporting ADRs may be wrong because most of the nurses in the study did not have any form of pharmacovigilance training.

Citation

ADU-GYAMFI, P.K.T., MENSAH, K.B., OCANSEY, J., MOOMIN, A., DANSO, B.O., AGYAPONG, F. and ARTHUR-MENSAH, R. 2022. Assessment of knowledge, practices, and barriers to pharmacovigilance among nurses at a teaching hospital, Ghana: a cross-sectional study. BMC nursing [online], 21, article 242. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-022-00965-4

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 1, 2022
Online Publication Date Aug 30, 2022
Publication Date Dec 31, 2022
Deposit Date Sep 8, 2022
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal BMC nursing
Electronic ISSN 1472-6955
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 21
Article Number 242
DOI https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-022-00965-4
Keywords Pharmacovigilance; Adverse drug reaction; Adverse drug reaction reporting systems; Nurses
Public URL https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/1745086

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Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.





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