Browsing by Subject "under-reporting"

Continuous monitoring of the safety profile of medicinal products is essential also after marketing authorisation approval to ensure the patient safety. Spontaneous reporting of adverse drug reactions is one of the most important methods to collect post-approval safety data of medicinal products. The advantages of spontaneous reporting system include reaching large population throughout a long period of time for many medicinal products, however, it also has some limitations. One commonly recognized problem of the system in many countries is under-reporting of adverse drug reactions. The national reporting scheme in different countries slightly vary, even between Nordic countries. The main aim of this study was to find out what improvements should be done to the current reporting scheme in Finland so that it would better encourage healthcare professionals to report in relevant situations, which respond to the purpose of the spontaneous reporting system. Physicians (n=20), pharmacists (B.Sc.) (n=78), pharmacists (M.Sc.) (n=21) and nurses (n=13) responded to the anonymous open voluntary online questionnaire. Close-ended questions were analyzed and results summarized in graphs and tables. Statistical analysis was done using chi-squared test. Content analysis was performed for open-ended questions by utilizing both, inductive and deductive approach. In the study, we found some differences in healthcare professionals’ opinions what kind of adverse drug reactions should be reported. Some of the healthcare professionals were also aware that they had not reported all suspected adverse drug reactions that came into their knowledge and several reasons were recognized for this. Seriousness of the reaction was considered the most motivating factor for healthcare professionals to report about suspected adverse drug reactions. The results of this study suggest that in healthcare professionals’ opinion, the most important factors that should be considered to improve reporting in Finland are training for healthcare professionals and simplifying the reporting as much as possible. Some differences were noticed between the occupational groups regarding preferences in the reporting route and especially physicians seemed to prefer formation of the report from the information system as a reporting method more than open web-based reporting form. Mobile application for reporting was not preferred that much among Finnish healthcare professionals. The results of this study support the hypothesis that under-reporting of suspected adverse drug reactions is also present in Finland. The reporting instructions should be clarified, training availability should be considered and reporting should be simplified as much as possible to improve the reporting.