Patients help highlight ’serious’ side effects of drugs

PA 160/10 - New research has shown that patient reporting of suspected adverse drug reactions (ADRs) is richer in detail and better at describing the impact on their daily lives than information provided by health care professionals. The study, led by Tony Avery, Professor of Primary Care at The University of Nottingham and carried out between October 2007 and June 2010, has shown that the introduction of patient Yellow Card reporting can help to identify important side effects of medicines including serious adverse reactions and reactions that had not been previously included in pharmaceutical product literature ('Summaries of Product Characteristics and Patient Information leaflets'). Tony Avery, Professor of Primary Health Care in the School of Community Health Sciences at The University of Nottingham, said: "Our study has shown that patient reports of suspected adverse drug reactions add value by highlighting problems that are not commonly reported by healthcare professionals, and by providing detailed information about adverse reactions, including the impact on patients' lives. Also, patient reports are just as likely as those from healthcare professionals to concern reactions that are considered serious." - Monitoring of suspected ADRs is vital for patient safety. The Yellow Card Scheme (YCS) run by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is the system for reports submitted from patients and healthcare professionals on a voluntary basis. Although the patient voice is clearly important for pharmacovigilance a survey carried out by this study found that of over 2,000 members of the public only one in 12 had heard of the Yellow Card Scheme.