Introduction

Antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASP) are important tools in the effort to reduce the global issue of antimicrobial resistance. Ideally, the foundations of ASP should start to be conveyed in undergraduate medical training.

Aim

To identify the presentation of ASP concepts in the curriculum of a medical school.

Material and methods

A cross-sectional study conducted among medical teachers from the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF). The inclusion criterion was teaching ASP-related content in the undergraduate medical course. We analyzed which key-concepts were presented, the number of hours dedicated to presentation, the teaching methodologies and the evaluation methods.

Results

The study was conducted between December 2017 and January 2018 and included six of the 329 (1.8%) teachers who taught on the Medicine course. The total hours dedicated to ASP teaching was 83; median of 3h/teacher, corresponding to 1.1% of the total class hours for the whole course. Five out of six (83.3%) teachers present at least one key component of ASP. The frequency of key ASP concepts presented was: specificity of treatment (5/6 - 83.3%), duration of treatment (4/6 - 66.7%), optimization of administration time (4/6 - 66.7%), possible switching of administration method (3/6 - 50%) and therapeutic drug level monitoring (2/6 - 33.3%). Four out of six (66.7%) teachers used combinations of teaching methodologies, which were reported in the following frequency: lectures (5/6 - 83.3%), clinical cases (4/6 - 66.7%) and problem-based learning (4/6 - 66.7%). Fifty percent of the teachers employed combined evaluations to measure the concepts presented and the most common used were: short dissertation questions (3/6), clinical cases (2/6), multiple choice questions (2/6), clinical summaries (1/6), seminars (1/6) and long dissertation questions (1/6).

Conclusions

We verified that key ASP-related concepts were presented in a Rio de Janeiro medical school, with a combination of different methodologies constituting the main strategy to convey the concepts. Combinations of evaluations were used by half of the teachers to measure the contents presented. A requirement is observed to improve the teaching of important aspects such as when it is possible to switch the administration method and monitoring of the therapeutic drug level.

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