A Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study Exploring Perceptions and Attitude of Pharmacists towards Adverse Drug Reporting in Pakistan

Objective: The main objective of the study was to explore the perceptions’ and attitudes of pharmacists regarding ADR reporting in the 2 major cities of Pakistan: Islamabad (the national capital) and Rawalpindi (its twin city). Methodology: A validated semi-structured questionnaire was distributed to a random sample of 382 pharmacists. Data was cleaned, coded and analyzed using SPSS vs. 16. Results: The results showed that 83.2% of the pharmacists were familiar with the term pharmacovigilance and 95.2% thought that it is important to report an ADR. On the other hand, only 38.7% of the pharmacists were of the view that pharmacist is well trained to report an adverse drug reaction in Pakistan. Only 7% of the pharmacists agreed on effective and efficient working of current pharmacovigilance centre’s in Pakistan and 91.3% strongly emphasized on improvement of current phamacovigilance practice in Pakistan. Conclusion: The findings concluded that concept of ADR monitoring is still not matured in Pakistan and there is need to develop monitoring systems to implement the idea of pharmacovigilance seriously in Pakistan. Keywords: Attitude; Adverse drug reporting; Pharmacist; Perceptions