What is the social life of antibiotics?

In this video, Professor Alex Broom continues to discuss the social life of antibiotics in the context of social science. This step focuses on:

• How antimicrobial resistance can be viewed as a consequence of individual behaviours – the behaviours of patients, the public and that of policy makers, healthcare providers and governments.
• How the current model of antimicrobial stewardship generally focuses on surveillance, restriction and correction approaches, and less so on addressing the drivers for why individuals behave the way they do. This includes why people sometimes don’t do something even when they know they should and also why they may do something even when they know they should not.
• Whether tacit or explicit, culture matters in healthcare. It has the power to moderate behaviours and shape intervention outcomes.
• An example from social science research involving interviews with clinicians in a remote hospital to better understand their perspective on antibiotic use and antimicrobial resistance.
• We need a better understanding of culture, if we want to develop interventions which are successful and sustainable.
• This is particularly true in antimicrobial stewardship, where multiple teams share responsibility for the treatment of infections in individual patients.

Please see below for further reading related to this presentation.

If you would like to hear more from Professor Alex Broom on his work involving social science to better understand some context-specific drivers in action then please view the full video presentation here.