What to teach future healthcare professionals about pharmacovigilance

Education about the safety and safe use of medicines is important for medical, pharmacy and nursing students. The framework of the ‘WHO PV core curriculum for university teaching’ describes five key aspects of pharmacovigilance (PV) with focus on clinical practice. These include: the importance of PV in the context of pharmacotherapy and preventing, recognizing, managing and reporting adverse drug reactions.

The five key aspects on PV can be integrated in existing courses such as pharmacology and therapeutics. Thus, PV will become part of pharmacotherapy education. However, it is also possible to use the framework as a basis for designing a stand-alone programme. More information about the framework, which has recently been published online by Drug Safety, can be found following this link: https://rdcu.be/WXUi

The outline of the ‘WHO PV Core curriculum for university teaching’ was drawn up by the first stakeholder meeting on PV education which was organized by Lareb, the WHO Collaborating Centre for PV in Education and Patient Reporting, in 2016.