Impact on Antibiotic Prescriptions of a Bundle Intervention Conducted by Medical Representatives in General Practitioner Facilities, Based on Operational Demonstration of an Internet Decision Support Tool: Antibioclic

Overview

At the international level, several experiments have been conducted to modify antibiotic prescribing practices in GPs. The mere development of training or the mere provision of information on the internet do not seem to change the practices when these interventions are conducted in isolation. On the other hand, various approaches involving communication training, specific educational interventions working on ideas received from examples, interventions at the point of care, and the use of electronic decision support systems have demonstrated beneficial effects on prescription. The fact of sending feedback on their prescribing practices back to GPs also showed an impact The Antibioclic website was created in 2011. It is an internet tool for prescribing help developed for general practitioners. Every day, it is consulted on average by 9000 health professionals. One question is how far the use of the site makes it possible to modify prescribing practices, which would justify, if need be, to actively promote it to general practitioners who do not use it. (The council of the order of doctors counted a little more than 88000 general practitioners in 2018.) One challenge would be to implement a strategy: * combining different actions that have shown their impact: visit to the place of care, awareness of antibiotic resistance, work on preconceived ideas, feedback on practices, use of decision support tools, * and generalizable nationally. The proposed study will thus experiment with an intervention modality based on the visit of a medical representative in general practitioner facilities, with: * antibiotic resistance sensitization, * work on preconceived ideas, * feedback on prescriptions, * use of an Internet tool to assist in the prescription of antibiotics: Antibioclic. The generalizability of the intervention will be based on the collaboration with the medical representatives , which already intervene in an operational and regular way on this topic on the whole France. The medical representatives, distributed throughout the country, provide regular visits to the GPs and promote good practices. This type of visit to GPs is original internationally, demonstrating its impact on practices is decisive. The purpose of the research is to compare the effect on antibiotic prescriptions made by general practitioners after 12 months of follow-up, i) an intervention led by the medical representatives in general practitioner facilities, the intervention involving usual visit (antibiotic resistance sensitization, work on preconceived ideas, feedback on practices) and demonstration of the use of Antibioclic, ii) an intervention conducted on the same terms by the the medical representatives but without Antibioclic demonstration, iii) compared to usual practice.