Shanmugasundaram P and Kumaraguru Anbalagan, Int. J. Res. Pharm. Sci., 10(4), 3286-3292 ORIGINAL ARTICLE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES Published by JK Welfare & Pharmascope Foundation Journal Home Page: www.pharmascope.org/ijrps A non-randomized interventional study to promote the knowledge, attitude and practices of community pharmacists towards pharmacovigilance Kumaraguru Anbalagan 1 , Shanmugasundaram P *2 1 Department of Pharmacy Practice, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Vel’s Institute of Science, Technology & Advanced Studies, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India 2 School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Vel’s Institute of Science, Technology & Advanced Studies, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Article History: Received on: 06.05.2019 Revised on: 13.08.2019 Accepted on: 17.08.2019 Keywords: Adverse Drug Reactions, Community Pharmacists, Educational Intervention, Pharmacovigilance ABSTRACT Pharmacovigilance promotes the safe and effective use of medicines and thereby optimizes the treatment quality. However, lack of awareness among community pharmacists towards pharmacovigilance decreases the propor- tion of adverse drug reactions reported and impairs the signal detection pro- cess. Hence this study was designed to assess and promote the awareness and attitude of community pharmacists towards pharmacovigilance. This educa- tional interventional study was carried out with 102 community pharmacists across Chennai. A pre-validated three domain-containing questionnaire, 20 items was used to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice before and after the educational intervention. Knowledge, attitude and practices of commu- nity pharmacists towards pharmacovigilance was signiϑicantly increased after the educational intervention (P<0.05, 95%CI). Median difference in an overall score of knowledge and practice was observed to be 4 and 4.5, respectively. Though the frequency of ADR reporting was not found to be greatly increased in our study, mass educational programs with adequate sampling intervals are needed to strengthen the signal generation process. * Corresponding Author Name: Shanmugasundaram P Phone: +91 9840126575 Email: director.sps@velsuniv.ac.in ISSN: 0975-7538 DOI: https://doi.org/10.26452/ijrps.v10i4.1634 Production and Hosted by Pharmascope.org © 2019 | All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION Pharmacovigilance involves the sequential activi- ties of detecting, assessing, understanding, man- aging, and preventing of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) (Campbell et al., 2015). Pharmacovigi- lance aims to promote the safe and effective use of medicines, thereby increasing the quality of treat- ment each patient receives (Sahu et al., 2014). Min- imizing the risk of adverse events through pharma- covigilance also tend to decrease the direct and indi- rect costs spent towards pharmacotherapy (Qing- Ping et al., 2014). Treatment decisions are always made taking risk-beneϑit ratio into consideration. Therefore, pharmacovigilance paves path for devel- oping systemic strategies for ADR risk stratiϑica- tion (Al-Woraϑi et al., 2017). The unequivocal role of pharmacists in ADR reporting is a crucial ele- ment for effective pharmacovigilance (Toklu and Mensah, 2016). Community pharmacists usually spent adequate time with patients and possessed relevant clinical expertise to understand the onset of ADRs (Tsuyuki et al., 2018). Moreover, the qual- ity of ADR reports sent to global pharmacovigi- lance process can be enhanced upon screening by community pharmacists (Baniasadi et al., 2014). 3286 © International Journal of Research in Pharmaceutical Sciences