Article
Educational Intervention and Monitoring Programme to Improve Physician Reporting of Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) in a Primary Care Setting
Verbesserung der UAW Meldungen von niedergelassenen Ärzten durch ein interaktives Schulungskonzept
Search Medline for
Authors
Published: | November 6, 2008 |
---|
Outline
Text
Background: Recent studies have shown that adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are underreported. This may be particularly true of ADRs associated with complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Data on CAM-related ADRs, however, are sparse.
Objective: To evaluate the impact of an educational intervention and monitoring programme designed to improve physician reporting of ADRs in a primary care setting.
Design and participants: A prospective multicentre study with 38 primary care practitioners specialized in CAM was conducted from January 2004 through June 2007. All physicians received face-to-face training to assist them in classifying and reporting ADRs. The study centre monitored the quantity and quality of ADR reports and analysed the results.
Results: A total of 404 ADRs were reported during the study period. An initial 148% increase (P=0.001) in the number of ADR reports was observed after the educational intervention. However, this increase was temporary. The completeness of the ADR reports increased from 79.3% before to 91.6% after the intervention. The completeness of the item for classifying ADRs as serious or non-serious increased significantly (P<0.001) after the educational intervention. The quality of ADR reports, as measured by the correlation between physician and study centre assessments of causality, increased from kappa 0.15 (95% CI: 0.08; 0.29) before to 0.43 (95% CI: 0.23; 0.63) after the intervention.
Conclusion: The results of the present study demonstrate that an educational intervention can increase physician awareness of ADRs. Participating physicians were able to incorporate the knowledge they had gained from face-to-face training into their daily clinical practice. However, the effects of the intervention were temporary. Further research is needed to determine whether extended or continuous educational measures might lead to more durable improvements in ADR reporting rates.