Education and training

Antimicrobial prescribing and stewardship (APS) competencies

The goal is to improve the quality of antimicrobial treatment and stewardship and so reduce the risks of inadequate, inappropriate and ill-effects of treatment. This will improve the safety and quality of patient care, and make a significant contribution to the reduction in the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance. Antimicrobial stewardship is an important element of the UK five-year antimicrobial resistance strategy.

Antimicrobial resistance is a global public health issue driven by the overuse of antimicrobials and inappropriate prescribing. The increase in resistance is making antimicrobial agents less effective and contributing to infections that are hard to treat. The number of infections due to multi-drug resistant organisms is growing, however, the number of new antibiotics in the pieline is extremely limited.

Antimicrobial stewardship initiatives aim to improve the prescribing of all agents, whether they target bacterial, viral, fungal, mycobacterial or protozal infections.

Bacterial resistance potentially complicates the management of every infection, no matter how mild they may be at the time of first presentation.

Educating the public and clinicians in the prudent use of antimicrobials as part of an antimicrobial stewardship programme is of paramount importance to preserve these crucial treatments and to help control resistance.

Antimicrobial stewardship competencies were designed to complement the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) National Prescribing Centre’s (NPC) generic competency framework for all prescribers.

Competencies are described as a “combination of knowledge, skills, motives and personal traits”, development of which should help individuals to continually improve their performance and to work more effectively.

The APS competencies can be used by any independent prescriber to help develop their prescribing practice at any point in their professional development in relation to prescribing antimicrobials.

PHE Antimicrobial Prescribing and Stewardship Competencies

TARGET antibiotics toolkit

http://www.rcgp.org.uk/clinical-and-research/target-antibiotics-toolkit.aspx

The TARGET toolkit has been developed by the RCGP, PHE and The Antimicrobial Stewardship in Primary Care (ASPIC) in collaboration with professional societies including GPs, pharmacists, microbiologists, clinicians, guidance developers and other stakeholders.

The toolkit provides a wealth of information about antibiotic prescribing including:

• Patient information leaflets
• Resources for clinicians
• Training resources to help fulfil CPD and revalidation requirements
• Audit toolkits
• Self-assessment checklist providing strategies to help optimize antibiotic prescribing in primary care

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats facing us today.

Antibiotic Guardian, an initiative developed by Public Health England (PHE) is urging members of the public and healthcare professionals to join in the campaign and take action and help make sure antibiotics work now and in the future.

To become an Antibiotic Guardian people choose and enact a pledge about how they will make better use of antibiotics.

What we want you to do: To slow resistance we need to cut the unnecessary use of antibiotics. We invite the public, students and educators, farmers, the veterinary and medical communities and professional organisations, to become Antibiotic Guardians.

Call to action: Choose one simple pledge about how you’ll make better use of antibiotics and help save these vital medicines from becoming obsolete.

To make your pledge and become an antibiotic guardian see link below:
Antibiotic Guardian - make your pledge