Antimicrobial resistance - are future prescribers aware? A study among undergraduate medical students in Kumaon region

Abstract

Background: According to the WHO, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, and death and is a global issue and measures to halt this is the need of the hour. Aims and Objectives: This study aims at identifying awareness as well as knowledge, attitude, perception, and practice regarding AMR and antibiotic use among medical undergraduate students, so to get insight and take appropriate actions to enhance their knowledge that will help in reducing AMR as they are the future prescribers. Materials and Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among 483 undergraduate medical students enrolled in government medical college, Haldwani. A pretested, semi structured questionnaire was designed to collect data from participants through Google forms regarding sociodemographic profile, and behavior of the participants regarding antibiotic use which comprises: Attitude, perceptions, and practice. Results: Majority of study participants have heard about AMR before (97%) of which most of them got information about antibiotic resistance by web/internet (35%). Majority of study participants were aware (>90%) of phenomenon of antibiotic resistance, 98.9% of them were correctly able to identify Amoxicillin and Penicillin as antibiotics, most of them had correct knowledge about role of antibiotics. Majority (83.6%) of participants take antibiotic only after the prescription of doctor, 78.9% of them reported use of antibiotics in the last year. Conclusion: A fair good amount of awareness, knowledge, attitude, perception, and practice regarding AMR and its use was found among study participants. Still, there is scope of improvement in it that can be addressed through giving more emphasis on this in undergraduate teaching curriculum.

Knowledge and Beliefs about Antimicrobial drug resistance and its Implications in Future Prescribers

“…Most of the respondents has good belief on antimicrobial drugs for the statements related to the beliefs about antimicrobial drugs, as they disagreed for, keeping antimicrobial drugs at home in case of need later (39.9%), getting antimicrobial drugs from others without seeing a doctor (92.8%), buying antimicrobial drugs from pharmacy without a prescription (85.7%), stop taking antimicrobial drugs when felt better (84.8%) and antimicrobial drugs should be used in treatment of all diseases (85.7%). These findings are similar to the findings of study done by Maroof et al in Kumaon region [8], and Suaifan et al in Jordan [18], where in the term antibiotics has been synonymously used for antimicrobial drugs. It was also found that 92.4% of the respondents agreed for taking complete antimicrobial drug dose, even if they felt better, however, this finding could be mainly based on their theoretical knowledge as the findings are contradictory to the finding of study done by Maroof et al [8].…”

“…These findings are similar to the findings of study done by Maroof et al in Kumaon region [8], and Suaifan et al in Jordan [18], where in the term antibiotics has been synonymously used for antimicrobial drugs. It was also found that 92.4% of the respondents agreed for taking complete antimicrobial drug dose, even if they felt better, however, this finding could be mainly based on their theoretical knowledge as the findings are contradictory to the finding of study done by Maroof et al [8].…”

“…This cross-sectional study was conducted at Janaki Medical College, Janakpurdham, Nepal, among 223 students (both males and females) of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) program, out of the total 290 students enrolled in various academic years. Data was collected in the month of April 2023, through a structured and customized self-administered questionnaire [8,9,10] as a tool , from the respondents of MBBS first year to MBBS final Year. The questionnaire comprised of 5 sections: section A included questions on demographic features, section B included 5 questions about the knowledge of antimicrobial drugs, section C included 13 questions related to the knowledge about antimicrobial resistance, section D included 6 questions about the beliefs about antimicrobial drugs and section E included 9 questions related to the implications of the knowledge of antimicrobial drugs and antimicrobial resistance as future medical doctors.…”