Educational Effectiveness, Target, and Content for Prudent Antibiotic Use

Abstract

Widespread antimicrobial use and concomitant resistance have led to a significant threat to public health. Because inappropriate use and overuse of antibiotics based on insufficient knowledge are one of the major drivers of antibiotic resistance, education about prudent antibiotic use aimed at both the prescribers and the public is important. This review investigates recent studies on the effect of interventions for promoting prudent antibiotics prescribing. Up to now, most educational efforts have been targeted to medical professionals, and many studies showed that these educational efforts are significantly effective in reducing antibiotic prescribing. Recently, the development of educational programs to reduce antibiotic use is expanding into other groups, such as the adult public and children. The investigation of the contents of educational programs for prescribers and the public demonstrates that it is important to develop effective educational programs suitable for each group. In particular, it seems now to be crucial to develop appropriate curricula for teaching medical and nonmedical (pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, veterinary medicine, and midwifery) undergraduate students about general medicine, microbial virulence, mechanism of antibiotic resistance, and judicious antibiotic prescribing.

Veterinarians’ Perception, Knowledge and Practices of Antibiotic Stewardship in Enugu State Southeast, Nigeria

“…and/or level of exposure to AMS in educational institutions, in the various study areas. Thus, the finding of very low proportion of respondents that have heard of ABS in this study, suggested there is little or no AMS education awareness (via mass media, in schools, social centres, etc) in the study area (Abbo et al, 2013;Lee et al, 2015).…”

“…It equally suggested that there is no ASP in form of continuing education, conferences, seminars, symposia, etc. (Lee et al, 2015) organized for veterinarians in the study area. It also suggested that curricula in Nigerian Veterinary schools are deficient on issues of ABR and ABS.…”

“…Veterinarians, animal handlers/caretakers and the public are at risk of acquiring resistant organisms from animals (via contact and food chain) and veterinary environment (Coyne et al, 2016). The most important interventions to combat ABR are considered to be education on antibiotic therapy, development of antibiotic usage policies and the development of institutional guidelines for antibiotic use (Cotta et al, 2014;Lee et al, 2015;Burger et al, 2016). Therefore, it is crucial that ASPs that involve evidencebased guidelines, educational programmes and regular feedback of antibiotic usage data to veterinarians to promote rationale-based and evidence-based prescribing, be developed and established in Nigeria (Wickens et al, 2013;Burger et al, 2016).…”

“…The WHO urged member countries to initiate educational interventions for the general population aimed at rationalizing the use of antibiotics to combat resistance (WHO, 2001;Awad and Aboud, 2015). Veterinarians as major healthcare providers are expected to be educators of their clients/the public on the appropriate use of antibiotics and issues of ABR (Belognia and Schwartz, 1998;Lee et al, 2015;Erku, 2016). More than one-third (35.9%) of the respondents in this study, educates their clients on the appropriate use of antibiotics, adherence to withdrawal period and issues of ABS and ABR.…”

Insight of Medical Students of Clinical Years to Antimicrobials Prescribing and Resistance in Private Medical School, Chittagong, Bangladesh

“…A very recent review article mentioned similarly that to promote prudent antibiotic prescribing the best time of intervention is during undergraduate medical studies. 16 Regarding the source of antimicrobial information, nearly half of current study respondents were uncertain about the presence of hospital guidelines. This was because the MS were not allowed to prescribe for the patients during their study periods in Bangladesh.…”