Scottish Management of Antimicrobial Resistance Action Plan 2014-18 (ScotMARAP2)

Action Plan: Antimicrobial Management Teams (AMTs)

The role of the Antimicrobial Management Team in improving standards of antimicrobial use includes supporting staff education and clinical governance, promoting application of hospital antimicrobial policies, and enabling audit and feed back of these policies, analysis of trends in local antimicrobial use and resistance data and interventions to improve prescribing in primary care.

The key deliverables for AMTs are:

• Demonstration of ongoing collaboration with Infection Prevention and Control teams. (Area 2)
  • Strategic: committee representation and joint working on specific projects relating to AMR and antimicrobial prescribing.
  • Reactive: AMT involvement in outbreak control/ clinical incidents/surgical site infections where antimicrobial prescribing may be implicated (e.g. CDI, SAB, MDRGNB).

• Demonstration of ongoing collaboration with ADTCs to report on AMT activities and provide expert advice on new antimicrobials. (Area 2)

• Optimising prescribing practice through implementation of antimicrobial stewardship (AS) programmes. (Area 2)
  • Demonstrate engagement with work of SAPG through participation in learning events and amplification of local good practice to and from SAPG
  • Demonstrate a continuing programme of work to support SAPG guidance
  • Report to the Board Medical Director to promote implementation of AS programme
  • Demonstrate engagement/ communication with key stakeholders (prescribers, pharmacy nursing, clinical groups and management) in local health board with regards to AS and AMR
  • Contribute to the development/ testing of national prescribing indicators/ other AS interventions
  • Demonstrate use of quality improvement methodology to support the AS programme
  • Demonstrate compliance with nationally agreed prescribing indicators Surveillance of local quantitative prescribing data and consideration in the context of national prescribing trends
  • Review of local and national AMR (and other microbiological) data in context of guideline development and AS strategies
  • Engagement with clinical teams to demonstrate feedback, learning and action in response to local and national AMR and quality improvement data. (Areas 2 and 3)
  • Demonstrate a continuing programme of work to anticipate, review and minimise unwanted unintended consequences of antimicrobial prescribing

• Improving professional education, training and public engagement to improve clinical practice and promote wider understanding of the need for more sustainable use of antibiotics. (Area 3)
  • Support inclusion of AS in local under graduate medical, nursing, AHP and pharmacy curricula
  • Ensure AS is included in different tiers of local post graduate education including new doctor induction programs and non-medical prescriber education programmes.
  • Support eLearning related to antimicrobials in both primary and secondary care
  • Support and develop engagement with European Antibiotic Awareness Day (EAAD)
  • Support the development of GP/ Consultant annual appraisal tool relating to aspects of antimicrobial prescribing/AMR

• Better access to and use of surveillance data in humans.
  • Ensure the timely communication of important antimicrobial surveillance data including their implications for clinical practice and proposed local actions.(Area 5)
  • Ensure participation in assessment of quality of prescribing data (e.g. point prevalence survey, antimicrobial audit, surveillance of antimicrobial use), regular feedback of these data to prescribers and development of quality improvement action plans. (Areas 2, 3 and 5)
  • Engagement with dental and non-medical prescribers to communicate surveillance data. (Area 5)

• Better identification and prioritisation of AMR research needs to focus activity and inform our understanding of AMR. (Area 2)
  • Share locally generated research ideas with SAPG.
  • Engage with and inform the work of the Infection Intelligence platform.