Graphical Abstract
Graphical Abstract.
LI, low-income countries; LMIC, low- and middle-income countries; HMI, high- and middle-income countries; HIC, high-income countries; CME, continuing medical education; ACPE, Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education.
Resource web link: https://med.stanford.edu/cme/courses/online/optimizing-antimicrobial-therapy.html (Full classification scheme available at: http://bsac.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Educational-resource-review-classification-scheme.pdf)
WHO region and country (World Bank): North America, USA (HIC)
Peer review commentary
This resource is jointly provided by Stanford University School of Medicine and University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy.
The course is simple, has a good structure and easy to follow. It is aimed primarily at hospital physicians but is very useful for pharmacists. It may also be used as an educational resource for last-year medical students.
Using short didactic sessions, it provides examples on how to reassess empirically started antibiotic therapy using clinical, laboratory and microbiological data. It comprises a module-1, testing pre-course knowledge and an introduction to antimicrobial timeout, and a module-2 with five antibiotic timeout clinical cases (pneumonia, urinary tract infection, non-purulent cellulitis, ventilator-associated pneumonia and febrile neutropenia). Each case ends with a multiple-choice question on whether a participant agrees with the initial antibiotic selection. In the end of the course a post-test is offered in order to obtain credits.
The cases are based on the IDSA guidelines which may not be applicable to all countries, especially LMICs with different epidemiological backgrounds.
Overall, this is a very useful educational resource, simple and short in duration, which emphasizes the necessity of reassessment of empirical antibiotic treatment.