Continuing Education and Informational Resources
Several organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, provide continuing education (CE) opportunities related to antibiotic resistance and appropriate antibiotic prescribing practices.
CDC Training on Antibiotic Stewardship
This online training course offers participants over 10 hours of free continuing education (CE). It is accessible in multiple modules that can be taken in any order.
Course objectives include:
- Updating healthcare professionals on current antibiotic resistance threats
- Informing healthcare professionals about proper antibiotic prescribing
- Encouraging open discussion among physicians and patients about appropriate antibiotic prescribing
Course highlights include educational content on:
- Antibiotic resistance threats in the United States
- Benefits of antibiotic stewardship
- Risks and benefits of antibiotics
- Epidemiology of outpatient antibiotic use in the U.S. and opportunities for improvement
- Communication training for clinicians to improve outpatient antibiotic prescribing and use
- Antibiotic stewardship considerations for the management of common outpatient conditions
- Antibiotic stewardship in the outpatient setting, dentistry, emergency departments, hospitals, and nursing homes
While this course is primarily for clinicians who prescribe antibiotics, CDC recognizes that everyone plays an important role in improving antibiotic use. Physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, certified health education specialists, nurses, pharmacists, and public health practitioners with a master’s degree in public health are eligible to receive over 10 hours of free continuing education.
This course fulfills Improvement Activities (IA) Patient Safety and Practice Assessment (PSPA)_23 and PSPA_24 under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Merit-Based Incentive Programs, or MIPS.
- 4 Moments of Antibiotic Decision Making in Critical Access Hospitals [Video – 59:03]
- AMR Exchange: Addressing Health Inequities by Strengthening Antibiotic Stewardship Webinar [Video – 1:28:29]
- Tune in to Safe Healthcare: A CDC Webinar Series
- COCA Call: What Clinicians, Pharmacists, and Public Health Partners Need to Know about Antibiotic Prescribing and COVID-19
To Prescribe or Not To Prescribe? Antibiotics and Outpatient Infections
This communication training activity from Stanford University provides a practical approach to the management of common outpatient infections through the use of both instructional and interactive videos and patient role plays. National guidelines will be reviewed with emphasis on the most appropriate empiric antibiotic choice and duration of therapy. This course is designed for physicians in family practice, primary care, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and emergency medicine— as well as pharmacists, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and allied health professionals. *CE is available for this resource.
The Primary Care Office Visit: Antibiotics
This role-play simulation is designed to help patients and physicians improve their skills in leading real-life conversations about the appropriate prescription and use of antibiotics, improve collaboration at the point of care, and change behaviors. Visit conversationsforhealth.com/antibiotics to build your knowledge and skills by engaging in practice conversations with a virtual patient or physician. *CE is not available for this resource.
Educating Patients About Antibiotic Usage
This 7-minute YouTube video from the New York State Department of Health features sample patient/provider interactions in a video format. Use this tool to develop and refine “talking points” to have more productive conversations about antibiotics with your patients. *CE is not available for this resource.
Medical Students
Below are education opportunities currently available for medical students about antibiotic resistance and the importance of antibiotic stewardship.
An Antibiotic Stewardship Curriculum for Medical Students
This curriculum focuses on antibiotic resistance, judicious antibiotic use, and common respiratory tract infections, and is intended for use in U.S. medical schools. It is comprised of didactic lectures, corresponding exam questions, and small group activities with facilitator guides. Didactic lectures are meant for medical students in the pre-clinical years. The small group activities are for students on clinical clerkships.
IDSA 2019 Core Antimicrobial Stewardship Curriculum Self Study for Medical Students
This curriculum prepares medical students to explain the importance of antibiotic stewardship in the care of individual patients and the community at large, model antibiotic stewardship best practices during clinical care of patients in inpatient and outpatient settings, structure a conversation to effect change in the antibiotic prescribing patterns of other providers using techniques based in behavioral psychology, and understand the elements of an effective antibiotic stewardship program.