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Home / Healthcare & Medicine / Antimicrobial & Antibiotic Resistance / TARGET Antibiotics – Prescribing in Primary Care / What Next? Summary of Week 4 and Downloadable Action Plan

What Next? Summary of Week 4 and Downloadable Action Plan

Watch the video to see how Paul Little uses the TARGET Treating Your Infection leaflet in practice and also summarises back up prescribing
View transcript
8.8
What next? How can you actually do this practically? Well, I think this is rather nice. TARGET have produced a rather nice patient information leaflet that pretty much will help you do everything you need to do. So all the sections can be personalised and added to by the GP. You’ve got the information about natural history there. Information about safety netting, so you don’t have to go through it all. You can just point to it. And information about a backup prescription and how to use it, and information about antibiotic resistance.
38.5
So what I quite like doing when I’ve got these, either a booklet or something like this, is to go through it and point to the patient when you’re talking about the different things. So you will feel like you’re signposting them to the different bits of the leaflet. They take the leaflet home. You’ve given them concrete advice. A rather nice thing to do. So what next? Well, if you haven’t tried it, I’d give it a go. Patients like it. If you do it properly, you’re going to get quicker and you will reduce antibiotic use. But to do it properly, you need to remember the six R’s, which I won’t go through again.
77.6
I would aim personally to keep it for the 30-odd percent where you are a little bit unsure. So 5% of people are pretty unwell. You’ve pretty worried about them. You don’t want to give antibiotics. 40% to 50%, hopefully you’re not really very worried about. And certainly I would do a new prescription and just proper safety netting. But there may be the group that you’re a bit unsure, about 30% to 40%. Maybe think about targeting those. I would do an audit to see how often you’re using it, how often you’re using the different strategies. But if you use delay prescription properly, it will save you time for the patients who use it, because you’ll reduce re-consultations.
119
You’ll have fewer complications than no prescription.

So what can you do now to implement better communication and back up/delayed antibiotic prescribing in your practice? Watch the video to see how Paul Little uses the TARGET Treating Your Infection leaflet in practice and also summarises where back up/delayed antibiotic prescribing can be useful.*

We hope you have enjoyed Week 4 and that you found the videos from Dr Nick Francis and Professor Paul Little useful. If you would like to watch the full video which was included in the PHE TARGET webinar series and includes the live panel discussion please follow this link to the TARGET webinar on Managing Patient Expectations and TARGET webinar on Back Up/Delayed Prescribing.

In Week 5 we will we will look at the importance of correctly prescribing antibiotics for children. We hope that you can join us for this.

Use of health behavioural pledges have shown to increase knowledge and influence behaviour. As part of this course we encourage you to create an action plan like the downloadable version that is available as a link at the bottom of the page. This form also gives you the opportunity to reflect back on each week of the course as you work through them, making valuable notes for future reference.

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TARGET Antibiotics – Prescribing in Primary Care

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*The leaflet shown has since been updated and rebranded in line with the Keep Antibiotics Working campaign (in Patient interaction and Discussing Antibiotics)

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This content is taken from BSAC online course
TARGET Antibiotics – Prescribing in Primary Care
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