587 An Audit to Establish the Need for Ear, Nose and Throat Antibiotic Guidelines at a Teaching Hospital in the UK
L Le Blevec, S Shahsavari, D Walker- Surgery
Abstract
Aim
Correct antimicrobial prescribing is paramount in providing and improving the safety and quality of patient care. The aim of the audit was to assess how confident doctors who treat patients with ear, nose and throat (ENT) conditions at a teaching hospital were at prescribing the correct antimicrobial therapy, as well as how confident they were in finding the relevant guideline.
Method
A survey was sent via email to emergency department, ENT and surgical clinicians in this hospital ranging from foundation year one doctors to consultants. They were asked a series of questions using a five-point likert scale.
Results
Thirty-one responses were collected, mostly from emergency department clinicians (64.5%) and ENT (29%), of which 41.9% were consultants, 19.4% non-training grade SHOs and 12.9% foundation year one doctors. Nearly half (48.4%) were only ‘somewhat’ to ‘not at all confident’ in prescribing the correct antibiotics for ENT patients. 58.1% were ‘somewhat’ to ‘not at all confident’ in finding antibiotic guidelines for ENT conditions in this specific hospital. 96.4% suggested an ENT section on ‘MicroGuide’ (a mobile platform to distribute antimicrobial guidelines) would be useful plus or minus a poster.
Conclusions
This study showed there was a significant need for secondary care ENT guidelines at this local hospital. Due to limitations of physical guidelines such as posters becoming outdated, we planned to collaborate with the microbiology team to create online ENT antibiotic guidelines on MicroGuide.