Nurses as adverse drug reaction reporting advocates

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) is a challenge in modern healthcare, particularly given the increasing complexity of drug therapy, an ageing population, rising multimorbidity, and a high patient turnover. The core activity of detecting potential ADRs over the last half century has been spontaneous reporting systems. A recent Norwegian regulation commits healthcare professionals other than physicians and dentists to report serious ADRs. In this discussion paper, we share our preliminary experience with a training programme using nurses as ADR advocates to stimulate ADR reporting among the clinical staff in a hospital department.