ATTITUDINAL SURVEY OF ADVERSE DRUG REACTION REPORTING BY MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS IN THE UNITED-KINGDOM

1 Attitudes of doctors to the Committee on Safety of Medicines' (CSM) adverse drug reaction (ADR) reporting scheme were investigated in orde r to assess their understanding of the purposes of the scheme and to i dentify reasons for failing to report suspected adverse drug reactions . 2 A postal questionnaire and letter of invitation were sent to 500 d octors who were randomly selected from the 1992 Medical Directory. A r eminder letter and a second copy of the questionnaire were sent to non -responders after 4 weeks.3 284 (57%) responded to the questionnaire. Of these, 179 (63%) stated that they had previously reported an ADR to the CSM or a pharmaceutical manufacturer. 77% of general practitioner s stated that they had reported one or more ADRs compared with 55% of hospital doctors. 4 Reasons for under-reporting included lack of time, lack of report forms and the misconception that absolute confidence i n the diagnosis of an adverse reaction was important in the decision t o send in a report. 5 An investigation of seven commonly proposed reas ons for under-reporting showed that on the whole they did not apply, 6 Most doctors knew the types of reactions that the Committee on Safety of Medicines seeks reports for but only 38% knew the precise meaning of the Committee on Safety of Medicines' black triangle symbol. There also seemed to be confusion about some of the purposes of the adverse drug reaction reporting scheme.7 The number of reporting doctors is mu ch higher than has previously been estimated. However, there is still a significant lack of understanding about the yellow card reporting sc heme and this seems to be contributing to under-reporting. Increasing the profile of the Committee on Safety of Medicines' ADR reporting sch eme may improve reporting rates and the numbers of reporting doctors.