Clinician's Knowledge and Performance regarding Antibiotics Stewardship

Abstract

Background: Antibiotic stewardship programs (ASP) improve clinical outcomes, patient safety and help combatantibiotic resistance. Increasing awareness and practice of Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) has gained immenseimportance in hospitals for preventing the irrational use of antibiotics. Clinicians should play a key role in fightingantimicrobial resistance (AMR), and medical education is a fundamental issue to combat it. Understanding theknowledge and practices of clinicians regarding antibiotic prescription and antibiotic resistance is important forcontrolling irrational antibiotic use. Method. A cross-sectional study design was utilized to accomplish this study. Aconvenient sample of 128 clinicians in ICUs, which included 21 clinicians in the general ICU, 24 clinicians in NeonatalICUs (NICU) and 83 clinicians in surgical unit at Aga Central Hospital. The researchers used three tools to assess thedemographic and occupational data, knowledge, and performance of clinicians. Results. The study revealed that 73.4%of the studied clinicians had a poor level of knowledge and 71.9% of them had an incompetent performance levelregarding antibiotics stewardship. Conclusion. Since clinicians had a poor level of knowledge and an incompetentperformance level regarding antibiotics stewardship, it is recommended to design and implement an effectiveeducational program for clinicians regarding antibiotics stewardship.