Reducing antibiotic prescribing

Antibiotic resistance poses a major threat to everyday life and modern day medicine where lives could be lost as a result of antibiotics not working as they should.

An elearning programme from e-Learning for Healthcare – Reducing Antimicrobial Resistance: An Introduction – includes a myriad of resources to support awareness and education of clinical staff on antimicrobial resistance. This open-access learning resource is suitable for all staff, clinical and non-clinical working across all settings.

The TARGET Antibiotics Toolkit from RCGP is a collection of resources including training modules covering infections, including skin infections, UTIs, respiratory infections and a self assessment checklist. The Training resources include:

• A series of 7 free TARGET antibiotics webinars developed by Public Health England and the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC), which highlight key easy actions you can take to help improve your antibiotic prescribing.
• Antibiotic Resistance in Primary Care This course, which is free to primary care health professionals,  will assist you in identifying the need for optimised antibiotic prescribing, as well as equipping you with tools for improving your antibiotic prescribing. Evidence showing the link between prescribing and resistance rates in GP patients is explored and useful resources to use in your surgery are included.