An Educational Intervention to Improve the Use of Antibiotics in Portuguese Health Professional

Overview

This is a cluster randomised controlled trial covering all general practitioners working in the National Health System (SNS) and all pharmacists working in community pharmacies in the area covered by the Health Region Administration of Center (ARS-C) . A specific educative intervention, designed from gaps detected in knowledge and attitudes with respect to antibiotics and resistance, will be carried out on the intervention group. The control group will not receive any specific intervention. Hypotheses: 1. The attitudes and knowledge towards antibiotics generate habits of prescription by physicians 2. The attitudes and knowledge towards to antibiotics generate propensity to dispense antibiotics without prescription by pharmacists 3. The identification of the attitudes, knowledge and factors that generate habits of inadequate prescription will allow the design of specific educative interventions to improve the use of antibiotics 4. The identification of the attitudes, knowledge and factors that generate propensity to dispense antibiotics without prescription will allow the design of specific educative interventions to antibiotic use 5. The interventions designed from gaps detected in knowledge and attitudes with respect to antibiotics and resistance will improve the prescription and dispensation of antibiotics by physicians and pharmacists, respectively. 6. The intervention will collaborate in the control of the bacterial resistance.

The intervention will consist of group outreach visits (40 minutes), and will be targeted at changing the knowledge-attitudes previously found to be associated with poor prescribing of antibiotics in the case of physicians and propensity to dispense antibiotics without medical prescription in the case of pharmacists.. An observational cohort study of a sample of 1100 primary care physicians and 1200 community pharmacists will be carried out to identify knowledge-attitudes associated with inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics. The independent variables (knowledge-attitudes) will be assessed by a self-administered postal questionnaire and dependent variables are some quantity and quality indicators of the prescribing antibiotics, and consumption data.