Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the impact of an online educational workshop on improving the knowledge, and perception of community pharmacists in Jordan towards the antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) and enhancing their ability to appropriately select correct antibiotic therapy.
Methods: This is a pre-post study that was conducted in Jordan in December 2020. An electronic questionnaire was used to assess the awareness, perception of community pharmacists towards AMS, and their ability to appropriately select correct antibiotic before and after the educational workshop. The two-days' workshop was conducted on Zoom application. Analysis was conducted using Wilcoxon signed-rank test, McNemar's test using SPSS version 22.
Results: During the study period, 100 community pharmacists attended the educational workshop. Pharmacists' knowledge was assessed prior to their participation which revealed a relatively good knowledge score with a median score of 6/10 (IQR = 4); their scores have improved significantly following the educational workshop with a median score of 7/10 (IOR = 2), p-value<0.001. Although one-third of the participants knew the definition of AMS prior to the workshop, almost half of the respondents (n = 56, 56%) knew the definition after the educational workshop. Regarding community pharmacist's ability to appropriately select correct antibiotic therapy, they showed a significant improvement in selecting the optimal antimicrobial for the virtual cases following the workshop (p-value < 0.05). Perceptions towards AMS were consistently positive before and after the workshop.
Conclusion: This study revealed the benefit of AMS-focused workshops for improving community pharmacists' knowledge and appropriate antibiotic prescribing. Thus, efforts are required to implement more AMS educational workshops for community pharmacists.
Keywords: antimicrobial resistance; community pharmacist; knowledge; perception; stewardship program; workshop.
© 2021 Saleh et al.