Working with the public to improve antimicrobial stewardship

Photo credit: Melany @ tuinfosalud.com

Our current behavioural science project with the Julia Anderson Training Programme (JATP) Trainees is exploring what the public understand by “take exactly as prescribed” on their antibiotic prescription. Caitlin Murphy and Arlette Albert have been working with our Behavioural Science Lead, Dr Kate Grailey, to recruit and work with members of the public, with a focus on improving antimicrobial stewardship.

We are delighted to have conducted another fantastic series of public engagement work, including focus groups and co-design workshops with over 50 people from across the UK. Not only has this been a fantastic example of us keeping the public at the heart of our work – with a steering group helping us to design all our public engagement sessions – but it has been an opportunity to allow our JATP trainees to gain skills and co-facilitate the engagement sessions.

Our two focus groups, held in February, allowed us to explore what “take as prescribed” means. One insight we gained was that stopping the course early was due to misconceptions about antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and external factors (e.g. side effects, issues with consistently taking antibiotics alongside meals). Across three co-design workshops, our public collaborators came up with over 70 ideas for ways to change behaviours around antibiotics and antimicrobials, refining these down to a shortlist of three.

We are aiming to trial these in an online experiment later this year – watch this space!