Antibiotic resistance leads to infections that are increasingly difficult to treat. Resistance can be partially curbed through responsible antibiotic use. In this thesis reponsible antibiotic use was explored by consulting different stakeholders: antibiotic prescribers, patients, public health organisations, manufacturers and regulators.
Key results:
- Consensus on a definition and indicators for responsible antibiotic use that can be used by healthcare facilities can use these to improve their antibiotic use and for education.
- Insights in views and experiences of hospital patients with antibiotic use that can be used to improve the communication between healthcare professionals and patients.
- An inventory of barriers and facilitators for responsible antibiotic use that can be used to guide multisectoral antibiotic policies.
These results contribute to the body of knowledge regarding the complexity of using antibiotics responsibly and are embedded in a context of increasing awareness of the societal implications of ABR and of the need for multi-sectoral actions to address the issue.
The PhD thesis is accessible here.
About the author: Annelie A. Monnier (1990) obtained her Master’s degree of Biomedical Sciences from the University of Amsterdam in 2014. That same year, she started a joint PhD program at the Radboudumc (the Netherlands) and Hasselt University (Belgium). Currently, she is a researcher and project coordinator of the ABACUS II at the department of Medical Microbiology of the Radboudumc. Her research focuses on infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance.
ABACUS project 