Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing threat worldwide. This ongoing global catastrophe has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic due to the increased use of antibiotics to treat secondary infections. Effective antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) practices can serve as the best solution to this menace. AMS program in a hospital helps to improve patient care, ensure correct prescription for therapy and prophylaxis, and reduce treatment failures. Subsequently, morbidity, mortality and the length of hospital stay of the patients and ultimately the financial burden on the healthcare facility (HCF) can be reduced.
It is the need of time to train the Health care professionals to become antimicrobial stewards. Since 2017, The Hospital Infection Control & Prevention (HICP) Unit, Department of Microbiology has conducted six HIC workshops, each included 2 days of Antimicrobial Stewardship module. Henceforth, the department, considering the broad scope, has planned to conduct workshop solely for Antimicrobial Stewardship. This workshop aims at training the Clinical Microbiology faculty across the country who are working or intend to work in this field, so that they can implement, establish or augment antimicrobial stewardship as well as train others in their own institutes.
It has been named ‘Advanced National Workshop’, as it has moved from a basic level of training to more specialized and in-depth training in individual components of AMS. The workshop is split into 2 themes- Diagnostic stewardship module and Clinical stewardship module.
As said “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it”; this workshop will be focusing on extensive training in Diagnostic stewardship with special emphasis in Processing of clinical specimens, Automation in Microbiology, Antimicrobial Susceptibility testing (CLSI and EUCAST) and Clinical stewardship module includes implementation of AMS, AMS interventions, Monitoring of the AMS program, Principles of antimicrobial therapy, Nutshell on Antimicrobial Agents, Clinical Microbiology Reporting Software, One health approach in AMS, MDR/XDR/PDR analysis and Hospital Antibiogram. Homework were given to the participants at the end of each day, which were discussed the next day. A post-test evaluation was conducted.
A social networking group was created before the workshop and all the resource materials such as CLSI & EUCAST guidelines, eBooks, articles and manuals used for the workshop preparation were shared with the participants on a regular basis. This was intended to arouse interest and to update the participants about the course content so that it would be easy to understand the sessions during the workshop. A pre-workshop virtual session was conducted to sensitize the participants and give orientation about the workshop. By use of Mentimeter and Vevox, an innovative educational online tool, we intend to make the sessions more interesting and interactive. The lesson plan in most of the sessions were based on case scenarios, group discussions and MCQs.
We are fortunate to have a young and exceptionally committed team working day and night for the workshop. The weather during the workshop is expected to be mild and pleasant. We hope the participants found it a fruitful sojourn.
Looking forward to your wholehearted participation. Welcome aboard
