Study of knowledge, attitude and practice amongst medical professionals about antimicrobial stewardship in tertiary care teaching hospital in India: a questionnaire based study

ABSTRACT

Background: Appropriate selection of antimicrobial drugs is critical to optimize treatment of infections ad limit the spread of antimicrobial resistance. Antimicrobial resistance is a serious global problem of antimicrobial abuse and there is a growing consensus to urgently develop new strategies for prevention of resistance of bacteria to antimicrobial agents. Relatively few studies of knowledge, attitude and practice are published regarding antimicrobial resistance.Methods: To explore the perceptions of knowledge, attitude and practice of antimicrobial agent use and its resistance in medical professionals in a tertiary teaching care hospital in India. This study was a cross-sectional, questionnaire based study conducted in tertiary care teaching hospital in India for a duration of three months and on a sample size of 300. All medical teachers, residents and interns were included in studies. Questionnaire included 8 questions of knowledge, 10 questions of attitude and 8 questions of practice. The parameters on which the data was analysed were, gender-wise distribution of data, Age-wise distribution of data, hierarchy-wise distribution- Residents, Lecturers, Assistant Professors, Associate Professors, Professors, according to years of experience, Departmental survey. Some questions were assessed by Likert scale, whose responses ranged from always to never. Some questions were of yes and no type, others were multiple choice questions.Results: The majority of respondents were males (65.66%). Most of the participants were from 21-30years (44%) followed by 31-40 years (32.66%). Almost 77.6% participants had upto 5 years of experience in their respective field. Participants had good knowledge, positive attitude and followed a rational and fair practice about antimicrobial stewardship.Conclusions: Adequate training should be given to UGs and PGs about antimicrobial chemotherapy and its usage. It should be part of their curriculum- proper prescribing, dispensing and usage of AMA so as to promote judicious use of AMA.