Clinical trial NCT02173509: An Educational Intervention to Improve the Use of Antibiotics in Portuguese Health Professional
Official title: An Educational Intervention to Improve the Use of Antibiotics in Portuguese Health Professional: Cluster-randomized Trial
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Antibiotics Misuse
Lead sponsor: Aveiro University
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
First posted: 2014-06-25
Enrollment: 2300
Sex: ALL
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: OTHER

Brief summary: This is a cluster randomised controlled trial covering all general practitioners working in the National Health System (SNS) and all pharmacists working in community pharmacies in the area covered by the Health Region Administration of Center (ARS-C) . A specific educative intervention, designed from gaps detected in knowledge and attitudes with respect to antibiotics and resistance, will be carried out on the intervention group. The control group will not receive any specific intervention.

Hypotheses:

1. The attitudes and knowledge towards antibiotics generate habits of prescription by physicians
2. The attitudes and knowledge towards to antibiotics generate propensity to dispense antibiotics without prescription by pharmacists
3. The identification of the attitudes, knowledge and factors that generate habits of inadequate prescription will allow the design of specific educative interventions to improve the use of antibiotics
4. The identification of the attitudes, knowledge and factors that generate propensity to dispense antibiotics without prescription will allow the design of specific educative interventions to antibiotic use
5. The interventions designed from gaps detected in knowledge and attitudes with respect to antibiotics and resistance will improve the prescription and dispensation of antibiotics by physicians and pharmacists, respectively.
6. The intervention will collaborate in the control of the bacterial resistance.

Detailed description: The intervention will consist of group outreach visits (40 minutes), and will be targeted at changing the knowledge-attitudes previously found to be associated with poor prescribing of antibiotics in the case of physicians and propensity to dispense antibiotics without medical prescription in the case of pharmacists.. An observational cohort study of a sample of 1100 primary care physicians and 1200 community pharmacists will be carried out to identify knowledge-attitudes associated with inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics. The independent variables (knowledge-attitudes) will be assessed by a self-administered postal questionnaire and dependent variables are some quantity and quality indicators of the prescribing antibiotics, and consumption data.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* All general practitioners working during the period of the study in the National System of Health (SNS)
* All pharmacists working during the period study in the community pharmacies.

Primary outcomes:
measure: Change From Baseline Antibiotic Consumption at 18 Months, in Primary Care
timeFrame: up to 18 months
measure: Antibiotic Monthly Sales Data and Quality Indicators Monthly Prescribing Rates.
timeFrame: May 2012- September 2014
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
Study officials:
References:
citation: Teixeira Rodrigues A, Roque F, Pineiro-Lamas M, Falcao A, Figueiras A, Herdeiro MT. Effectiveness of an intervention to improve antibiotic-prescribing behaviour in primary care: a controlled, interrupted time-series study. J Antimicrob Chemother. 2019 Sep 1;74(9):2788-2796. doi: 10.1093/jac/dkz244.
citation: Roque F, Teixeira-Rodrigues A, Breitenfeld L, Pineiro-Lamas M, Figueiras A, Herdeiro MT. Decreasing antibiotic use through a joint intervention targeting physicians and pharmacists. Future Microbiol. 2016 Jul;11:877-86. doi: 10.2217/fmb-2016-0010. Epub 2016 Jul 14.