Abstract

A key objective of the decentralized pharmacovigilance program is to increase the knowledge of in-service healthcare professionals in pharmacovigilance to enable them develop a culture and practice of adverse drug reactions reporting. It is imperative to evaluate the impact of the training offered, as it is a key component of the national decentralized pharmacovigilance program. Thus the aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of a one-day decentralized pharmacovigilance program training of healthcare professionals on pharmacovigilance in South Africa. Self-administered structured, pre- and post-training questionnaires were retrospectively reviewed. The healthcare professionals’ knowledge regarding pharmacovigilance in South Africa significantly increased after the one-day training intervention (P < 0.002). There was an increase in the number of correct answers to every question, although to varying degrees. However, despite this increase, it is clear that various aspects of the overall training need to be re-emphasized to have an even greater impact, and there is a strong indication of a positive shift in pharmacovigilance knowledge gained, though to varying degrees.

Key words: Pharmacovigilance, training, health care professionals, impact.