Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting Among Health Professionals In The Lawra Municipal Hospital Of The Upper West Region

ABSTRACT Background; Medicines have the potential to cause Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR) and therefore the need for health professionals to detect and spontaneously report to the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) for further actions to ensure patients and public safety. Aims: This study was conducted to ascertain the proportion of ADRs reported by health professionals in the Lawra Municipal Hospital of the Upper West Region of Ghana. The study also sought to assess the level of knowledge of health professionals on ADR reporting procedures. Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey of 187 health professionals randomly selected from the Lawra municipal hospital. Data were collected through self-administered structured questionnaire from June 19 to July 4 2019 with 98.3% and 1.6% response rate . Data were analyzed using STATA software Version 15.0. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the background characteristics of respondents and the outcome such as proportion of ADR reported summarized in percentages, frequencies and charts. Results:There was 64.4% ADR reporting rate and 68.75% health professionals who ever saw an ADR case reported it by completing the ADR form. Level of knowledge on ADR reporting procedures was 58.15% among respondents. The main systemic challenge with ADR reporting was lack of access to the online reporting portal for ADR. Conclusion: The Lawra Municipal Hospital has high ADR reporting rate and high level of knowledge about ADR reporting procedures. However, there is the need to improve access to the online reporting system to staff. The limitation of the study was the possible recall bias by respondents and the inability of the researcher to verify the number of ADR cases reported.