Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Towards the Influence of Pharmacogenomics in Drug Safety among Future Healthcare Professionals

• Main Authors: Mainul, Haque, Rohayah, Husain, Adamu, Yau
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: R Medicine (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.unisza.edu.my/7087/1/FH02-FP-16-05528.jpg; http://eprints.unisza.edu.my/7087/

Objective: Pharmacogenomics aims at understanding the roles of genetic variations in drug safety. Rational application of genomics into the cycle of patients care would leads to safer medication through individualized medicine. Healthcare professionals are increasingly expected to integrate pharmacogenomics into practice, but this integration has been below expectation and the increasing trends of genetic discoveries coupled with increased adoption of pharmacogenomics in developed countries pose challenges to presence and future healthcare professionals not only in Malaysia. Therefore, this research, aimed to assess knowledge, attitude and practice of final-year future healthcare professionals towards pharmacogenomics in order to evaluate their readiness towards these pharmacogenomic based challenges for the first time in Malaysia. Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted by administering self-completed questionnaire (Cronbach Alpha 0.822) to 247 respondents. Results: A final 68.4% responded. Of 169 responses, 69.8% were females and 63.3% were medical students with mean age of 22.98±SD1.03. The total mean knowledge scores in percentage was 57.57±SD20.15 with statistical significant difference between the two professions (p-value = 0.002 at α = 0.05). A positive attitude, but low level of practice ware observed with a significant differences between pharmacy and medicine students with P < 0.05 respectively. Association between knowledge and practice, attitude and practice were investigated. Conclusion: Majority of Malaysian future doctors and pharmacist demonstrated good knowledge and attitude toward pharmacogenomics but with very low level of practice and researches are required with large sample and to investigate the barriers to application of pharmacogenomics in to practice.