[Clinical pharmacy and pharmacovigilance over a period of nine years in hospital].

INTRODUCTION

Underreporting is the main limit in any pharmacovigilance system relying on spontaneous notification. Available data emphasize that pharmacists report few adverse drug reactions (ADRs) in France.

OBJECTIVE

To report how the integration of pharmacists in health care units contributes to reporting of ADRs and to study the validity of the reports.

METHOD

Over a period of nine years we have prospectively collected and analyzed all ADRs collected by pharmacists in a university hospital setting and notified to the regional center of pharmacovigilance.

RESULTS

Over the study period 2017 notifications were sent. Over the past four years the annual number of reports varied between 250 and 350. This amount is approximately ten times the number referred by physicians during the year preceding the beginning of this work. Only 8.6% of the submitted notifications were rejected by the pharmacovigilance center for various reasons: no causal link between the adverse event and taking medication, problem of timing, lack of data...

CONCLUSION

The integration of the adverse reaction reporting in the daily activities of the pharmacist is a mean to increase very significantly the number of reports (factor of increase of 9.6 to 13.4).