Understanding antibiotic prescribing and use of guidelines in general practice – the GP National Antimicrobial Prescribing Survey (GP NAPS) pilot study

Project Details

Antimicrobial resistance is an international concern that is posing an increasingly serious threat to global health. One contributor to this issue is potentially inappropriate prescription of antibiotics in the community, including general practice. The Antimicrobial Use and Resistance in Australia (AURA) report published in 2016 ranked Australia sixth in terms of rates of antibiotic prescribing in the community compared to 28 European countries. However, we don’t have a good understanding of the appropriateness of antibiotic prescriptions in general practice or how GPs use guidelines, such as Therapeutic Guidelines (TG) Antibiotic, to inform their prescription of these medications.

We will undertake focus groups with GPs to understand how they use the electronic medical record (EMR) and guidelines to make decisions about the use of antibiotics and what feedback GPs would like to help them to optimise appropriate antibiotic prescribing. Based on these results, we will work with GPs to develop a clinical decision support (CDS) tool integrated with the EMR that provides access to guidelines and pilot this in a simulation laboratory.  This is important work that will underpin a trial of the CDS tool and the development of a passive antibiotic audit to monitor its impact.

Researchers

Collaborators

Funding

Therapeutic Guidelines Ltd (TGL)/RACGP Research Grant

Research Group

Diabetes and Cardio-Metabolic Conditions


Faculty Research Themes

Infection and Immunology

School Research Themes

Cardiometabolic


Key Contact

For further information about this research, please contact the research group leader.

Department / Centre

General Practice and Primary Care

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