The contribution of direct patient reporting to pharmacovigilance / door Florence Petra Anne Maria van Hunsel.

"Patient reporting is not meant to replace reporting by healthcare professionals. Reporting by healthcare professionals is a cornerstone in spontaneous reporting in pharmacovigilance and healthcare professionals should not be deterred from reporting. However, this thesis shows that reporting by patients can be an important complementation to the reporting by healthcare professionals. Patient reports may enhance the current spontaneous reporting systems, for example by providing information on a different range of suspected ADRs and giving information not previously captured from healthcare professionals' reports such as influence of ADRs on the quality of life. The studies in this thesis show that patient reporting of ADRs help to broaden our insights on the safety of drugs, which is ultimately the goal of all our pharmacovigilance activities. Finally, some suggestions are made for further research life studying if patient reporting also increases the rapidity of signal detection."--From Summary.