Effects of Health Education on Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting among Community Pharmacists in Anambra State, Nigeria

Background: Poor reportage of adverse drug reaction has been linked o. increase in morbidity, mortality and economic burden of diseases and health related conditions. Objective: To determine the effects of health education on knowledge, attitude and practice of adverse drug reaction (ADR) reporting among community pharmacists practicing in Anambra State. Methods: This interventional study was conducted among Community Pharmacists in Anambra State. Simple random samp\ling technique was used. Pre-tested, semi-structured self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data on respondents’ socio-demographics, knowledge of, attitude to and practice of ADR reporting Associations between variables were tested using Chi-square and Binary logistic regression at 5% level of significance. Data obtained were analyzed using SPSS version 23. Results: The mean age of the respondents was 46.5±11.2 years. Post intervention result shows that there was an increase in knowledge of ADR reporting in the intervention group from 52% to 95.3%. There was a decrease in knowledge of ADRs reporting in the control group from 47.3% to44.7%. There was a statistically significant difference between the experimental group and the control group on their attitude towards ADR reporting (p<0.05). Only 26.7% of the test group had filled a spontaneous reporting ADR form prior to this study compared to 18% from the control group and is associated with the effect of health education intervention. Conclusions: There was underreporting of ADRs, associated with gaps in the knowledge, attitude and practice among the community pharmacists studied. There is need for focused continuous health education interventions on ADR reporting among them.