Teaching Pharmacovigilance to Healthcare Students: Identifying Gaps and Opportunities for Improvement

Abstract

The literature indicates that the limited pharmacovigilance knowledge demonstrated by healthcare professionals is the main reason for the underreporting of adverse drug reactions. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to investigate pharmacy, dental and medical students' knowledge and attitudes to pharmacovigilance and pharmacovigilance education. The cross-sectional questionnaire study was conducted at the University of Split School of Medicine in November 2020. In total, 350 students participated in the study. The results have shown that pharmacy students showed a significantly higher knowledge score compared to dental and medical students (P < 0.001). In total 92.2% of pharmacy, 21.8% of dental and 70.8% of medical students had knowledge of patients' involvement in adverse drug reactions, reporting (P < 0.001). Interestingly, only 44.3% of all students knew that adverse drug reactions could be reported using a mobile application. Moreover, significantly more pharmacy students (74.4%) were aware of the adverse drug reactions monitoring center in Croatia, with 47.5% of dental and 39.2% of medical students correctly identifying it (P < 0.001). The results showed that most students felt that pharmacovigilance was not adequately covered in curricula; therefore, there is a great need to increase the knowledge and awareness of pharmacovigilance among students aspiring to become future healthcare professionals, and improve their reporting practice in clinical future.

Keywords: healthcare students; knowledge; pharmacovigilance; survey.

Figure 1

Students’ knowledge scores across study programs. Data are presented as median and interquartile range; knowledge score range (0–7). * Kruskal–Wallis test, with post hoc Dunn analysis, P < 0.05 Pharmacy vs. Dental, Pharmacy vs. Medical.