Implement Undergraduate Pharmacovigilance Education in Universities Around the World

Education about pharmacovigilance (PV) is important for undergraduate medical, pharmacy and nursing students. Lareb, the WHO Collaborating Centre for Pharmacovigilance in Education and Patient Reporting, organized a stakeholders meeting to share current practices and issues in PV education for undergraduate students across the world. Cooperation between universities and PV centers was discussed. Furthermore concepts of teach-the-teacher courses were considered.

Ten colleagues from universities and PV centres from five different countries (Chile, France, India, Kenya and Morocco) were invited for this meeting. The main outcome of the meeting is that universities and PV centres are willing to teach about PV. However, limited time is available.

It is advisable to integrate PV key aspects into existing curricula, rather than teach it as stand-alone programme. Since PV centres or single university teachers cannot provide all the undergraduate PV education, teach-the-teacher courses should be developed and implemented. This will result in university teachers capable of teaching PV key aspects in their own curriculum.

The participants of this meeting will continue as a working group, with their first aim to develop a teach-the-teacher course in PV. This course will be tested in a pilot setting in the five countries. Also, a web-portal, http://www.pv-education.org/, has been developed to share educational materials. The next step is to elaborate this web portal.