Abstract
Background: Blood transfusion is a lifesaving procedure but has potential to cause adverse events. Hemovigilance is a program that ensures safety of transfusion reactions by monitoring every step of transfusion process from donor to recipient. However, reporting of adverse reactions is far less in our country.

Aim and Objective: The aim of the study was to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of health-care professionals and examine various causes of underreporting in our tertiary care hospital.

Material and Methods: This observational cross-sectional questionnaire-based study was conducted in Department of Pharmacology Government Medical College (GMC) Kathua in associated hospital for the period of 1 month after obtaining approval from Institutional Ethics Committee of the college under no-IEC/GMCK/18/Pharma/dated-18/2/2020. Fifty randomly selected health-care professionals including doctors, nurses, and pharmacists were the volunteers. They were provided with a sheet containing 37 pre-validated questions and the time period of 30 min was provided to respond to the questions. The questionnaire contained 37 questions composed of nine questions of knowledge, six questions for attitude, four for practice, 11 for underreporting, and eight for possible ways to improve reporting of reactions.

Results: The sheets of responses were analyzed and results revealed that awareness of hemovigilance was 84%, while knowledge to report adverse events was 76%, whereas 88% volunteers were aware that reporting is essential and can benefit patient care. Among these, 24% of volunteers had attended coronal mass ejection (CME’s). As per attitude meaning agreed that reporting of reactions is essential and hemovigilance should be taught to health-care professionals, practices that revealed that a few had attended CME’s and only 20% of these volunteers had ever reported adverse reactions related to blood transfusion. As for as underreporting is concerned majority felt where to report reaction (72%) and lack of time (56%) followed by legal liability issues (52%) were main causes of under-reporting.

Conclusion: Although the health-care professional volunteers had good knowledge and attitude but the practice score was far less. Therefore, to report adverse reactions of blood transfusion and lack of time was major perceived causes of under-reporting. Such results underscore the importance of incorporating the education of hemovigilance in their duty curriculum to address their problems.

Key words: Hemovigilance; Adverse Drug Reactions; Blood Transfusion; Knowledge; Attitude; Transfusion Reactions