FutureLearn partners with The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy to educate healthcare professionals worldwide
BSAC’s courses will be open for enrolment on the FutureLearn site today and will be available from 3rd April 2017
London, UK, 14th March 2017: FutureLearn, the leading social learning platform, today announces its partnership with The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC) whose courses ‘Challenges in Antibiotic Resistance: Gram Negative Bacteria’ and ‘Challenges in Antibiotic Resistance: Point Prevalence Surveys’ are launching on 3rd April and 1st May respectively.
The newest addition to FutureLearn’s partner portfolio, BSAC brings 40 years of experience in antibiotic education, research and leadership, which aims to reach healthcare practitioners who are responsible for infection management, via FutureLearn’s online platform. BSAC are joining the platform alongside existing partners who are leaders in healthcare education, such as Health Education England and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. FutureLearn will be working with BSAC on open courses but will also be supporting them to curate courses and programs privately to staff and healthcare and pharmaceutical and diagnostic organisations across the world.
BSAC’s first course, ‘Challenges in Antibiotic Resistance: Gram Negative Bacteria’ is aimed at healthcare professionals managing infections, in particular how to identify, diagnose and treat gram negative bacteria (GNB). The course will also look at GNB in a global context and discuss the impact they have on health and economic outcomes.
Their second course in the series, ‘Challenges in antibiotic Resistance: Point Prevalence Surveys’, starting on 1st May, looks at the important tool, Point Prevalence Surveys (PPS), for healthcare professionals to use to assess and improve the prescription of antibiotics on a local, national and global level. The course will look at the tool itself, how to conduct a PPS, as well as evaluating its limitations.
Dilip Nathwani, OBE, President of BSAC, commented: “We are delighted and excited by our partnership with FutureLearn. It will allow us to deliver a range of pragmatic, multi-media open access courses across the globe that educate, inform and facilitate improvements in antibiotic prescribing, the management of infectious disease and patient outcomes. This partnership will offer us access to an international community of almost 6 million learners, an opportunity we intend to take full advantage of.”
Mark Lester, Director of Partnerships Development at FutureLearn, said: “We’re thrilled to be partnering with such an influential voice in the healthcare sector who are raising awareness around the major global challenge of antibiotic resistance and working with professionals to improve practice in this field. Healthcare practitioners are a major community on FutureLearn so we’re delighted to be able to extend our portfolio with these high quality courses from BSAC and to be their partner in delivering its education privately to organisations worldwide. We are confident that learners anywhere will be able to leverage the highly discursive element of courses on FutureLearn to share and learn from other professional experiences in the field.”
As with all FutureLearn courses, learners will be able to enrol in the courses for free or upgrade for £59 – £69 to get extra benefits.
Notes to editors
About FutureLearn
“Pioneering the best social learning experiences for everyone anywhere”
Founded by The Open University in 2012, FutureLearn is a social learning platform, designed to support learning through conversation. It offers 5.7 million learners free online courses from world-leading UK and international universities, centres of research excellence and specialist education providers like the British Council, Creative Skillset and European Space Agency. FutureLearn is an international platform with over 75% of its users based outside of the UK.
About The British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy
The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC) is an inter-professional organization with over 40 years of experience and achievement in antibiotic education, research and leadership and is dedicated to saving lives through appropriate use and development of antibiotics now and in the future. BSAC publishes the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy http://jac.oxfordjournals.org, the leading international journal in its field, and leads Antibiotic Action, a UK led global initiative that seeks to ensure effective antibiotics are researched, discovered and developed for all who need them. The Society engages with a wide range of stakeholders to improve and promote understanding of antimicrobials, including peer organizations, parliamentarians, policy-makers, students and healthcare trainees, scientists, researchers and journalists.
For further information on BSAC and its activities please visit BSAC www.bsac.org.uk
For more information, please contact:
Niamh O’Grady, Senior Communications Manager (FutureLearn)
Rachel MacPherson, PR Executive (FutureLearn)
rachel.macpherson@futurelearn.com
Tracey Guise, CEO (BSAC)
TGuise@bsac.org.uk; Phone: 0121 236 1988
