Reporting of adverse drug reactions by nurses.
Schemes for spontaneous reporting of adverse drug reactions are important to post-marketing safety surveillance worldwide. In the UK, doctors, dentists, coroners, and pharmacists are allowed to report through the yellow card scheme, but nurses were not until October, 2002. We used a similar programme to assess the role of community and hospital nurses in reporting of adverse drug reactions. The proportion and quality of reports received from nurses was similar to that of those received from doctors: we received reports from one in seven nurses eligible to report, compared with one in eight doctors; 137 of 177 nurse reports and 676 of 984 doctor reports were judged to be appropriate according to regulatory authority criteria (95% CI for difference between proportions 1.4-15.0, z=2.3, p=0.02). Our findings suggest that nurses, who form the largest proportion of health-care staff in the UK, can play a valuable part in improvement of pharmacovigilance.
Morrison-Griffiths
Sally
S
Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, University of Liverpool, Ashton Street, L69 3GE, Liverpool, UK.
Walley
Thomas J
TJ
Park
B Kevin
BK
Breckenridge
Alasdair M
AM
Pirmohamed
Munir
M
D016907:Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting Systems; D003625:Data Collection / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D064420:Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions; D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training; D024802:Nurse's Role; D009733:Nursing Diagnosis / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011358:Product Surveillance, Postmarketing; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D006113:United Kingdom