Antimicrobial stewardship

What is antimicrobial stewardship?

Antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) is the name for systems that help both people who prescribe medicines.

Those who use medicines to treat infections know the best way to use them and to prevent unwanted effects.

What is an antibiotic?

An antibiotic is the name for a medicine that helps to treat infections caused by bacteria. There are other types of antimicrobial medicines for other types of infection.

Depending on the situation, the best route to give antibiotics could be by mouth or into a vein (IV).

This resource is talking mainly about antibiotics and how we use them.

Antimicrobial stewardship is important because antibiotics are usually very safe but using them too often, for too long or not using the best type of antibiotic for the infection can cause problems.

These problems include symptoms for the person taking them including upset tummy, rash and in rare cases can cause allergy.

There are also problems for everyone else in the community. The main problem here is ‘antibiotic resistance’.

What is antibiotic resistance?

Using antibiotics can make bacteria resistant to antibiotics. In other words, the antibiotics will no longer work against the bacteria. Someone who has recently had antibiotics is more likely to have ‘resistant’ bacteria in their body. Some bacteria have become resistant to almost all antibiotics!

The more antibiotics you take the more likely you are to:

• carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria and to spread them to other people such as friends, family and pets
• to have antibiotic resistant infections in the future

When this happens antibiotics will work less well or not at all.

Bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics more quickly than new types of antibiotic can be invented. If this continues we will run out of antibiotics to treat even common infections like a chest infection or urinary infection. People could then get very sick or even die from infections that once were easily treated with a course of antibiotics.

What can we do?

When you first come into hospital often it is too early to be sure of what is causing your illness. The doctor may give you antibiotics just in case.

Antimicrobial stewardship is there to help support health care professionals in their decisions. It is not supposed to stop antibiotics that are needed, but to make sure that health care professionals choose:

• the right tests to help decide if the infection needs antibiotics
• the best antibiotic has been chosen
• the best route for antibiotics to be given (by mouth or through the vein)
• the safest time for antibiotics to be given

There is a dedicated team in the hospital to help promote antimicrobial stewardship.