Abstract
Background: The concept of Pharmacovigilance (PV) has been discussed by various research groups’ form past many years but had been recently topic of research interest in many of the Asian countries including the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The number of studies that looked into the knowledge and attitude of pharmacist toward PV and adverse drug reactions (ADR) reporting in KSA is very limited. This study was performed to assess pharmacist’s knowledge, attitude and practice toward PV and adverse drug reactions reporting process in KSA.
Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional survey study was conducted using an online self-administered questionnaire involving 400 randomly selected Saudi pharmacists.
Results: A total of 400 participants responded to the questionnaire. Among them, 300 (75%) were community pharmacists and 100 (25%) were hospital pharmacists, of which, 120 (30%) were male and 280 (70%) were female. The mean age of the responders was 33.1±9.4 years. There was a significant difference found between the hospital pharmacists and community pharmacists in terms of knowledge about PV concept and policy (p<0.05). The majority of pharmacists showed bad practice; 270 (67.5%) of participants reported patients with ADRs a few times a year and most of the 375(93.75%) never reported any ADR. However, pharmacists had a good perception of the importance of ADRs reporting. All participants agreed that they will report ADR on witnessing the reaction of a serious nature. On the other hand, 300 (75%) pharmacists reported the absence of enough information from the patient as the main factor that discouraged them to report ADRs.
Conclusion: Although hospital pharmacists had a significantly higher knowledge than community pharmacists with regard to PV knowledge, the total knowledge and attitude towards ADR reporting were inadequate.

Key words: Adverse drug reaction (ADR), pharmacovigilance (PV), knowledge, hospital pharmacist, community pharmacist, Saudi Arabia