Physicians’ knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards adverse drug reaction reporting and the magnitude of poor adverse drug reaction reporting and associated factors at selected public hospitals in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Abstract

Abstract Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) defines adverse drug reaction (ADR) as any response to a drug which is noxious and unintended, and occurs at doses normally used in man for prophylaxis, diagnosis, or therapy of disease, or for the modification of physiological function. Adverse drug reactions are serious public health problems and increases with increasing incidence as more medicines become available and more people exposed to them. Underreporting is a major limitation of spontaneous reporting systems as it is estimated that only 6% of all adverse reactions are reported. In Ethiopia despite the potential risks of adverse drug reactions, to date there are about 600 ADR cases reported per year to the national pharmacovigilance center out of which 378 are reported from Addis Ababa which is very low as compared to the World Health Organization’s recommended adverse drug reaction reporting rate, which are 200 reports per million populations per year (6)..In Addis Ababa, there is limited information on physicians’ knowledge, Attitude and practice towards ADRs reporting and the magnitude of poor adverse drug reaction reporting and associated factors, Hence, this study aims to assess physicians’ knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards adverse drug reaction reporting and the magnitude of poor adverse drug reaction reporting and associated factors at selected public hospitals in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Objective: The objective of this study is to assess physicians’ knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards adverse drug reaction reporting and the magnitude of poor adverse drug reaction reporting and associated factors at selected public hospitals in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methods: Facility based cross sectional study was conducted from May 22, 2022 –July 21, 2022.Data was collected from 109 physicians using self-administered questionnaire. Simple random sampling was used in the sampling technique method to identify the hospitals in which the study will be conducted. Data quality was maintained by pre testing the questionnaire for its accuracy, completeness and consistency prior to the actual data collection and necessary adjustments were made to the questionnaire following the pretest. Data was analyzed using SPSS statistical package version 25.0.0.Discriptive statics was used to calculate frequencies, means and other indices. Result: The majority of the participants that is 70(64%) are in the age group of 21-30.Out of the 109 respondents 48(44%) were males while 61(56%) were females. The majority of the participants that is 56(51%) had a work experience of less than five years.59.1% of the physicians had poor knowledge about ADR reporting while the rest (40.9%) of the physicians had adequate knowledge about ADR reporting. With respect to attitude, this study illustrated about 76(70%) of the respondents strongly agreed that ADR reporting is necessary. Physicians significantly identified that ADR reporting is necessary (81.7%, P<.05).Overall, about 57.4% of respondents showed a positive attitude towards adverse drug reaction reporting Out of 109 participants involved in the study, 59(54%) encountered ADR in the past 12 months of their clinical practice. A significant number of physicians (71.6%, P<.05) observed ADR during the last 12 months of their practice. Overall, about 56.1% of the physicians had poor practice of ADR reporting. The results of the multivariable logistic regression indicated that Male physicians were 1.465(46.5%) times more likely to engage in poor ADR reporting practice (AOR=1.465, 95%CI (0.376 - 0.024). Adequate knowledge and positive attitude were also significantly associated with poor ADR reporting practice. Physicians with adequate knowledge were 0.186(18.6%) timely less likely to perform poor ADR reporting practice as compared with physicians with inadequate knowledge. (AOR=0.186 with 95% CI of (2.00 - 0.342).Physicians with positive attitude were 0.117(11.7%) times less likely to perform poor ADR reporting practice as compared with physicians with negative attitude (AOR=.117 with 95%CI of (0.01 - 0.035) (Table 5) Conclusion: The present study identified that physicians had in adequate knowledge on ADR reporting, positive attitude poor recording practice of the ADR they encountered and poor ADR reporting practice. In addition, most of the physicians were not clear about the ADR reporting system in Ethiopia. Lack of ADR reporting form and lack of training on ADR reporting also contributed to the poor ADR reporting practice. Sex of the physicians was also related with poor ADR reporting. Majority of the physicians had positive attitude about ADR reporting despite poor knowledge about ADR reporting.