Introduction to the Course

Hello and welcome to the course. This video introduces you to our lead educator, Dr. Cliodna Mcnulty, and the challenge of antibiotic resistance that we are facing. The course highlights key easy actions that you can take to help improve antibiotic prescribing, the patient journey, self-care and reducing future consultations.

Public Health England (PHE), the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC), and primary care colleagues have developed this free TARGET course.

Over the next 6 weeks we will look at a variety of issues regarding antibiotic usage within your practice.

We hope that you enjoy the course and that you find information useful to build an action plan within your practice. Please do introduce yourself in the comments section and interact with this course and each other throughout. We’d also encourage you to follow Dr. Cliodna Mcnulty on FutureLearn and join other courses.

We hope you will find this a very useful and practical experience to improve your learning, avoid further development of antimicrobial resistance and improve patient outcomes when dealing with these infection but please note the following:

Individuals and pathologies vary greatly. None of the opinions discussed as part of this course are designed, nor intended to be an offer to treat, prescribe or give advice to specific individuals. The research, opinions and content presented throughout the course should in no circumstances be solely relied upon by any learner. If a learner is suffering from a particular health condition being discussed during the course, they should always seek medical advice from a qualified practitioner.

TARGET stands for: Treat Antibiotics Responsibly, Guidance, Education, Tools. The Target Toolkit aims to improve professional education, training and public engagement by offering a range of evidence-based resources that can each be used to support prescribers’ and patients’ responsible antibiotic use. The resources including patient leaflets, resources for clinical waiting areas, audit tools, diagnostic tools, and prescriber training can be used to encourage prescribers and patients to think more appropriately about antibiotic use.

The videos in this course were originally filmed for a series of webinars that were live streamed in November 2017. The full webinars including the panel discussions are available at the Target website.

You can see how much of the course you’ve completed on your progress page.

We value your input and would encourage you to let us know your opinions in the comments on this course. If you have any technical problems to the platform, please use the grey ‘Support’ button in the bottom right-hand corner of every step.

If you are unsure how to use FutureLearn, please follow this link.

Get extra benefits, upgrade your course

You can now get extra benefits by upgrading this course, including:

Unlimited access to the course: Go at your own pace with unlimited access to the course for as long as it exists on FutureLearn.

A Certificate of Achievement: To help you demonstrate your learning we’ll send you a Certificate of Achievement when you become eligible.

Find out more

This course has been approved by The Royal College of Pathologists at a level of 6 credits. The RCPath CPD approval process is in line with the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges standards and criteria for CPD activities framework guidance. Reciprocity has been agreed between colleges/faculties for all approved activities.

Please note all who submit their details to the RCP to claim CPD, agree that FutureLearn may need to share their data, including their progress on the course, with RCP for the purposes of auditing / offering CPD.

Please be aware that throughout the course we will link to supporting websites. All learners should make an informed decision on the appropriateness of these medical websites.