COMPARISON OF KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE & PRACTICE TOWARDS PHARMACOVIGILANCE BETWEEN INDUSTRIAL AND HOSPITAL PHARMACISTS

Sunita Kumari, Palaniappan Senthilkumar*

Pharmacist’s knowledge and expertise is important to the application of drug safety profile. Pharmacists are more likely to detect adverse drug reactions than other healthcare professionals. The main objective of the study is to assess the knowledge and attitude of industry and hospital pharmacist towards pharmacovigilance and also to find out the effect of educational intervention towards the knowledge, attitude & participation in reporting adverse drug reactions at tertiary care hospital in New Delhi. This study was conducted by using validated KAP questionnaire. Out of 230 pharmacists responded, 115 were from the industry and 115 from the hospital. The overall response shows that industrial pharmacist are better in terms of knowledge, practice and attitude towards pharmacovigilance because of their regular training and updates. Hospital pharmacists lack awareness about pharmacovigilance and needs to update their knowledge and practice. There is a regular need for educational intervention. After intervention, a significant improvement in the knowledge, attitude and practice towards pharmacovigilance was observed among hospital pharmacists.