Antimicrobial Stewardship: A competency-based approach

Overview: Welcome to the massive-open online course on Antimicrobial Stewardship: A competency based approach. Antibiotics are life-saving drugs and their discovery is among the most important advances of the 20th century. There is, however, accumulating data illustrating that antimicrobial misuse is widespread in all healthcare settings. This misuse contributes to the emergence of multi-drug resistant organisms, which threaten to undermine many of the most important medical advances of the last century. In order to preserve the utility of these life-saving drugs, we all must use antibiotics wisely. “Antimicrobial stewardship” refers to interventions designed to promote the optimal use of antibiotic agents, including drug choice, dosing, route, and duration of administration. To address antimicrobial resistance, all clinicians must become stewards of antimicrobials by prescribing them appropriately and educating their patients and colleagues on the proper use of this increasingly scarce medical resource. In this set of 15 modules, you will first review foundational clinical knowledge necessary to use antimicrobials wisely (Module A-E). Then, we will illustrate how clinicians can incorporate this knowledge into their daily work using common clinical scenarios (Module F-O).

Learning objectives: By the end of this course, participants should be able to understand core competencies of antimicrobial stewardship and how they can be applied to common clinical scenarios.

Course duration: Approximately 8 hours.

Certificates: A confirmation of participation is offered at the end of the course.