Results of a Pilot Fourth year Medical Student Elective in Antimicrobial Stewardship

Abstract

BackgroundAntimicrobial stewardship (AS) is not currently a formal part of the medical school curriculum. We hypothesized that presenting the topic to medical students can raise awareness of the effects of inappropriate antibiotic prescribing.MethodsA fourth-year medical student elective was created that included microbiological, clinical, and multidisciplinary elements. Week 1: Understand mechanisms of bacterial resistance and clinical implications. Week 2: Rotate on Infectious Disease (ID) Consult Service. Complete Wake Forest and CDC online study modules. Michigan Medicine faculty recently created new AS modules; these were reviewed and feedback was provided. Week 3: Meet with ID pharmacists and attend AS and Patient Safety Effectiveness Program meetings. Review the process behind creating AS guidelines and antibiograms. Week 4: Give a presentation to the third-year medical students at University of Michigan Medical School. Have the class complete pre- and post- surveys (before and after the presentation, respectively) of nine questions regarding important topics in AS.ResultsThe presentation created featured an innovative antibiotic-antimicrobial dating application model that was used to teach important AS scenarios. 96 third-year medical students completed the pre-survey and 62/96 completed the post-survey. The average correct response for multiple-choice questions on the pre-survey was 3.34/8 (42%) and 5.18/8 (65%) on the post-survey. Twenty-one/96 (22%) who took the pre-survey responded that they did not know what AS is, compared with 1/62 (1.6%) in the post-survey.ConclusionHaving an interdisciplinary clerkship for medical students to explore and learn about AS could have large impact, though sustainability is unknown. In this cohort, a focused social media savvy review helped medical students learn basic elements of AS, demonstrated by the improvement in student scores on the subsequent surveys. As patient and staff education becomes a requirement of AS programs, medical student education should be incorporated as well.Disclosures All authors: No reported disclosures.