Effects of Pharmacovigilance Training in the Elderly on the Knowledge, Attitude, and Performance of Nurses

Pharmacovigilance is an integral part of patient care. Medication side-effects in the elderly and the key role of nurses and healthcare team in the safety of these patients are of utmost importance. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of pharmacovigilance training on the knowledge, attitude, and performance of geriatric nurses in the health centers affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences in 2017.

This experimental study was conducted on 100 nurses employed in two teaching hospitals affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences, who were selected via convenience sampling. After the pretest, the nurses were non-randomly divided into two groups of intervention and control using the demographic and principles of drug safety questionnaires. The nurses in the intervention group received training on the principles of drug safety for the elderly for two weeks using a web-based program obtained from the website of the hospital, and the control group received no intervention. Two weeks after the intervention, posttest was performed on both groups. Data analysis was performed using the analysis of variance (ANOVA), independent t-test, and paired t-test at the significance level of P<0.05.

The intervention and control groups were completely homogenous in terms of the demographic characteristics. Before the intervention, no significant differences were observed in the knowledge, attitude, and performance between the groups (P>0.05). After training on the principles of drug safety, significant differences were observed between the intervention and control groups regarding the level of knowledge (P=0.33), attitude (P=0.003), and performance (P=0.027). In addition, the scores of knowledge (P<0.001) and attitude (P<0.001) significantly increased in the intervention group after the training, while the improvement in the performance was not considered significant (P=0.34).

Considering the positive effects of web-based training on the principles of drug safety on improving the knowledge and attitude of nurses and since skilled performance is essential to the recognition of concepts and situations, it is recommended that novel educational methods for the care of elderly patients be incorporated into the curriculum of nursing education.