Understanding of Pharmacy Students towards Antibiotic Use, Antibiotic Resistance and Antibiotic Stewardship Programs: A Cross-Sectional Study from Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

Antibiotic resistance (ABR) is a significant issue for public health globally. An adequate understanding of ABR and the approaches used to tackle ABR, including antibiotic stewardship programs, are vital. This study aimed to get an insight into antibiotic use, ABR, and antibiotic stewardship programs among pharmacy students of Punjab, Pakistan. This multicenter study was undertaken among final (fifth) year undergraduate pharmacy students of 7 universities of Punjab, Pakistan. A paper-based self-administered questionnaire comprising 48-items was utilized for data collection. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed for data analysis. This study included a total of 296 respondents with a response rate of 85.8%. Most of the students had an average understanding of antibiotic use (59.8%), ABR (42.6%), ABR mechanisms (48.0%), and factors of ABR (51.7%). Only 21.6% of students have heard about antibiotic stewardship programs. More than half of the students believed that educating and training healthcare professionals (53.4%) and medical students (57.8%) about the prescribing and judicial usage of antibiotics could reduce the ABR burden. The awareness of most of the pharmacy students about certain aspects of antibiotic use, ABR, and stewardship programs was suboptimal.

Assessing Knowledge and Perception Regarding Antimicrobial Stewardship and Antimicrobial Resistance in University Students of Pakistan: Findings and Implications

“…Moreover, 87.3% of the participants considered the empirical use of broad-spectrum antibiotics as a contributing factor to AMR. This value was higher compared to a previous study conducted in Pakistan, which showed that 63.9% of pharmacy students were knowledgeable about this contributing factor [30].…”

How Are We Educating Future Physicians and Pharmacists in Pakistan? A Survey of the Medical and Pharmacy Student’s Perception on Learning and Preparedness to Assume Future Roles in Antibiotic Use and Resistance

“…Fourth, a vast majority of medical and pharmacy students were not familiar with the term antibiotic stewardship. This finding is in line with the results reported in the study by Hayat et al [13]. Antibiotics use, resistance and mechanisms are part of the curriculum of both Pharm D and MBBS degree programs, however, specifically, principals of antibiotics stewardship and its concept is relatively new and grossly absent in both curricula.…”

“…A recent study conducted in seven pharmacy institutes in Pakistan concluded average knowledge of the students on certain aspects of the antibiotic use and only 21.6% of students were familiar with the antibiotic stewardship program [13]. These results are in line with the results of our study that involved a comparatively larger sample.…”

“…Whether these gaps originate from a lack of training and education at the beginning (during the undergraduate degree program, such as MBBS or Pharm D) or during professional practices, remains a debatable issue. Meanwhile, different studies report sub-optimal knowledge on the part of pharmacy and medical students regarding antibiotics use, resistance, and stewardship [13]. Despite antibiotic resistance being a significant threat in Pakistan, few studies have shed light on the nature of the contents of the training and education that students have undergone during MBBS and Pharm D degrees in Pakistan.…”

DataSheet1.pdf

“…Similarly, annually in Europe, 25,000 people die, and there is a loss of 1.5 billion euros (Sarfraz et al, 2020;García et al, 2021). Owing to the lack of modern antibiotics, the devastating results attributed to ABR are continually rising (Hayat et al, 2021). Management of Resistant infections consumes a huge capital of 1.68 billion USD per year (Hayat et al, 2019a) which may surge to 3.5 billion USD per year in the next decade (OECD, 2019;Hofer, 2019).…”