Knowledge and perceptions on adverse drug reaction reporting and associated factors among final year medical students at Makerere University, Uganda

Abstract

Background: Despite the efforts of National Pharmacovigilance Centre to strengthen pharmacovigilance in Uganda, under-reporting of adverse drug reactions still remains a challenge in the pharmacovigilance system of Uganda. Previous studies have shown that it is hard to change attitudes and practices of already practicing professionals. It is therefore, important to focus on adequately educating undergraduate medical students on pharmacovigilance. This study therefore, assessed the knowledge and perceptions on adverse drug reaction reporting and associated factors among final year medical students at Makerere University. Methods: The study was a cross-sectional descriptive study that was conducted at Makerere University, College of Health Sciences. A questionnaire was used to collect data. The study population consisted of 289 undergraduate final year medical students. Simple random sampling was used to obtain 168 study participants. SPSS version 24 was used to analyse the data and Chi-square was used to determine the association between students’ demographic characteristics and their overall knowledge and perceptions scores. Knowledge was categorised into good knowledge, moderate knowledge and poor knowledge while perceptions were categorised into positive and negative perceptions using blooms’ cut off points. A p-value of less than 0.05 at 95% confidence interval was considered statistically significant. Results: Majority 113 (67%) of the respondents had moderate knowledge and 143 (85.12%) positive perceptions on adverse drug reaction reporting. Only a few 34 (20.2%) students were aware of the time period within which serious adverse drug reactions should be reported and, 5 (3.0%) on all media used to report. It was also observed that only 66 (39.3%) of the medical students believed that they are adequately trained on how to report adverse drugs reactions and only 78 (46.4%) feel adequately prepared to report adverse drug reactions in their future practice. The main factor associated with knowledge was sex, with males being more knowledgeable than females (P-value; 0.046, AOR 6.36, 95% CI: 1.035-39.088). Conclusion: Most of the medical students had moderate knowledge on pharmacovigilance. Their application of the theory concepts of pharmacovigilance was still lacking. The students generally had positive perception on adverse drug reaction reporting although they feel inadequately prepared to report adverse drug reactions in their future practice.