General public views, attitudes and experiences towards drug safety and pharmacovigilance related issues in Dubai-UAE

Abstract

Ensuring drug safety among the public is the cornerstone of pharmacovigilance practice. Literature agreed that the engagement of medication consumers into pharmacovigilance practices is crucial. Currently, there is limited public contribution to the current system in the UAE. Therefore, this study has aimed to identify Dubai’s public views, attitudes, and experiences regarding medication safety and ADR reporting procedures. The current study adopted a mixed-method approach, which was conducted through three different phases. The first phase was qualitative in which a semi-structured interview guide was used. Fourteen face-to-face in-depth interviews were carried out from September to October 2017 with individuals from the general public. The sample was selected purposively using the snowball sampling technique. The interviews were conducted at different locations in Dubai, and they have been recorded, transcribed verbatim, and thematically analysed for data analysis. The emergent themes and subthemes found gaps in the public’s perspective of medication’s safety, which may consequently impact their attitudes during the course of medication use. The second phase was quantitative. A cross-sectional study was conducted at different public areas in Dubai from February to May 2018. A self-administered questionnaire was developed, validated, and piloted. A convenient sample of 400 individuals from the general public was recruited manually. The collected questionnaires were anonymously analysed. The obtained results have shown that participants pose various views and attitudes toward medication safety, where the majority (67.3%) of the participants had defined adverse drug reactions as the side effects of medicines, whereas only 8% have included drug interaction as part of their answer. It was noticed that (71.5%) of the respondents had agreed that the side effects of the medicines were not limited to high doses of medicine only. More than (65%) showed positive views regarding the risk of duplicating therapies. Only (15.8%) of the participants documented their awareness of the current ADR reporting system in UAE. The chi-square test found a significant difference (P<0.01) between males (41.1%) compared to females (26.8%) in the preference of the use of the telephone to report ADRs. Finally, the third phase analysed the pharmacovigilance unit database within 2013 - 2018. The extracted data showed 931 ADRs were reported, of which 69.7% were spontaneously reported and 47.2% were serious ADRs. Moreover, data has shown that the consumers’ actual contribution was 20% of the total reported ADRs in UAE. Finally, current research has concluded that there are significant gaps in the public’s views regarding medication safety, which consequently may impact patients’ attitudes during the course of medication use. Efforts are to be strengthened to enhance the public’s awareness of medication safety and ADR reporting in the UAE.