National learning community to improve antibiotic prescribing in out-of-hours primary care

Antibiotics are the most commonly prescribed medicines by general practitioners at Out-of-hour primary care services (OOH-PCS). About 15% of the population uses an OOH-PCS annually. That’s 4,4 million contacts every year. Acute infections are often the reason for this, often resulting in treatment with antibiotics. Inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics can have adverse consequences, including antibiotic resistance of bacteria, side effects, rising costs, and ecological damage. Therefore, it is also important for OOH-PCS to reduce their number of prescriptions.

Aim

However, little is known about which interventions are used by OOH-PCS and what are facilitators and barriers in their implementation. Within this project, researchers will work with OOH-PCS to create a national learning community with all used interventions, including the facilitators and barriers, through group discussions, interviews and questionnaires, to better support OOH-PCS in reducing antibiotic prescriptions.

Partners

The researchers will collaborate with representatives from OOH-PCSs and their professional organization InEen from the start of this project idea.

Expected results

OOH-PCSs can use the national learning community to implement interventions to improve their antibiotic prescribing which will ultimately lead to better patient care, containment of antibiotic resistance and less environmental burden and lower health care costs.