The second intervention

Well we ourselves thought about this and with the aim of reversing rising antibiotic use, we decided to change the mode of disseminating these guidelines. So in January 2011, in addition to a revised guidelines booklet, we additionally made these guidelines available through our intranet computer network of the hospital. And these computers are available in every ward, outpatient room, and departmental offices besides the pharmacy and other vital areas. So as you can see in this graph, if you look at the last segment that is after December 2010 to August 2012, you can see a downward trend showing that there has been some containment of this upward move of antibiotic use. So it looks as if these guidelines have been effective.

Do you have antibody policy guidelines in your hospital? If so, how have they being formulated and what was the mode of dissemination? Did it achieve the desired result of the aims of your antimicrobial stewardship programme? If not, what were the reasons? What are the main challenges you would face in relation to implementing strategies for antimicrobial stewardship in your own context? And lastly, but most importantly, could disseminating guidelines through a computer system or other technological features help in containing antibiotic use within your own hospital?

At this point I would like you to revise the learning points from week five and discuss what other strategies would be needed to supplement online guidelines in your own context and especially how we can change behaviour.