The effect of educational intervention on healthcare providers' knowledge, attitude, & practice towards antimicrobial stewardship program at, National Liver Institute, Egypt

Background Inappropriate use of antimicrobials results in rapid emergence of resistance, selection pressure on resistant microorganisms, adverse reactions, and treatment failures. An effective approach to improving antimicrobial use in healthcare settings is a structured antimicrobial management program known as antimicrobial stewardship (AMS). Education and training is considered a backbone element of AMS program .This study aimed to evaluate the impact of educational program on the knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of healthcare providers (HCPs) towards antimicrobial stewardship before and after the educational program at the surgery department and surgical ICU, National Liver Institute hospital (NLI), Egypt. Results Among the 69 invited HCPs, 48 attended the educational program sessions with attendance response rate about 70%. Regarding pre-educational KAP score of the respondents' physicians and pharmacists, 39.3% of them had good knowledge score, 85.7% of them had positive attitude, &and 31.8% of physicians had good practice score; however, 100% of the pharmacists had poor practice. Regarding the respondents' nurse, the pre-education mean score of knowledge was 13.3/20, attitude 14.8/16, and practice 9.3/14. Following educational program, there was a significant improvement in knowledge, attitude, and practice of the respondents' health care providers (P < 0.001); on the contrary, there was no significant improvement in the practice of pharmacists (P > 0.05). Conclusion The implemented educational program was successful in improving the knowledge, attitude, and practice of HCPs; therefore, continuous efforts are needed to implement more educational programs to increase awareness towards AMS among HCPs.