Knowledge, attitude, practices, and barriers regarding pharmacovigilance and adverse drug reaction reporting among medical and dental faculties of the teaching hospitals in Bhubaneswar City.

Aim: To assess the knowledge, attitude, practices (KAP), and barriers regarding pharmacovigilance and adverse drug reaction (ADR) reporting among medical and dental faculties of the teaching hospitals.

Methodology: This study was conducted for a period of 3 months among medical and dental faculties. A self-structured, 42-item closed-ended questionnaire based on pharmacovigilance and ADR reporting was used in this study. Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Version 21. All the items of the domains along with demographic variables were summarized as absolute and relative frequencies. Intergroup comparison was done using Kruskal-Wallis test and Mann-Whitney -test. The correlation between the domains was assessed by Spearman correlation coefficient.

Results: Among the study subjects, 272 (60.4%) were females and 178 (39.6%) were males. The number of medical and dental faculties was 360 (80%) and 90 (20%), respectively. The mean KAP scores for medical and dental faculties were 7.58 and 5.37, 8.78 and 6.01, and 6.91 and 6.32, respectively. The Spearman correlation coefficient (ρ) was found to be significant for knowledge-attitude and knowledge-practice domains. The values obtained between attitude with practice and barrier also were significantly correlated.

Conclusion: Our study findings advocate that although medical faculties have better knowledge about pharmacovigilance and ADR reporting, dentists have a positive attitude, thereby suggesting a huge scope of progress if more emphasis is given on the need for continuous educational initiatives and including the topic in their academic curriculum.