In India, the pharmacovigilance program is still in its infancy. National Pharmacovigilance Program of India was started for facilitating the pharmacovigilance activities. The ADR reporting rate is still below satisfactory in India. This cross-sectional questionnaire based study was carried out in a tertiary care teaching hospital in Uttarakhand, which is a peripheral ADR monitoring centre to assess the level of knowledge, attitude, and the practices of pharmacovigilance among the doctors and to compare it with the group of doctors attending educational CME for improving awareness of pharmacovigilance. The most important revelation of this study was that although adequate knowledge and the right attitude about adverse drug reaction reporting were instigated in the doctors after the educational intervention, the practice was still neglectful in both groups, emphasizing the need to design the strategies to develop adverse drug reaction reporting culture. 1. Introduction Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are among the significant cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide [1]. ADRs not only pose a risk to the patient’s safety, but also adversely affect their quality of life and increase the healthcare cost considerably [2, 3]. ADR incidence has been reported to range from 5.9 to 22.3% of all emergency department admissions [4]. India has one of the largest drugs consuming population, with majority of people belonging to low socioeconomic group. Thus, it is the need of the hour to identify adverse drug reactions as early as possible and to prevent them if possible, for ensuring the well-being of the patient at reasonable cost. Pharmacovigilance, which relates with the detection, assessment, understanding, and prevention of ADR to medicines, is of utmost importance in this regard. In India, National Pharmacovigilance Program of India (PvPI) is responsible for conducting activities related to ADR monitoring. Spontaneous reporting of ADRs by health professionals is the corner stone of pharmacovigilance. The health professionals have major contribution in signal detection of unsuspected and unusual ADRs previously undetected during the initial evaluation of a drug [5]. The major limitation associated with spontaneous ADR reporting system is underreporting [6]. It is estimated that only 6–10% of all ADRs are reported [7]. India rates below 1% in terms of ADR reporting [8]. This clearly emphasises that the current status of pharmacovigilance in India is far from satisfactory. Pharmacovigilance has been included in the medical undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum
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