Abstract

Introduction: Spontaneous adverse drug reaction (ADR) reporting is the cornerstone of pharmacovigilance. However, underreporting is a huge problem due to lack of reporting, especially in developing countries, where sistem of pharmacovigilance is not consolidated. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional survey is conducted on  health professionals (physicians and nurses) working in Mother Theresa hospital in Tirana from September 2015 to June 2016 aimed to estimating the level of pharmacovigilance knowledge and practice of health professionals. A questionnaire which was suitable for assessing the basic Knowledge, Attitude and the Practice (KAP) of pharmacovigilance was designed and distributed among the physicians and nurses and filled up forms collected back and analyzed by using software SPSS 20.                                                                                                                                                              Results: Out of 250 distributed forms 200 forms were received back, reflecting a response rate of 80%. Results of this survey have shown that 80% of interviewed didn’t know about the term of pharmacovigilance Over 90 % of declaration of adverse drug reaction were made to the medical representatives and less than 10% to the National Pharmacovigilance Centre. 50 % of physicians and 65 % of nurses were not aware of the existence of National Pharmacovigilance Center.  A wrong definition of pharmacovigilance term was given by 60% of physicians and 70% of nurses.
Conclusion: pharmacovigilance is a public health problem in Albania, with due to lack of
good knowledge and practice of medical staff (physicians and nurses). There was a great need to create awareness among physicians and nurses to improve the knowledge about pharmacovigilence and the reporting of ADRs.

Keywords: Adverse drug reaction, Knowledge, attitude, and practices study, Pharmacovigilance, Spontaneous reporting