Level of senior medical students’ knowledge on antimicrobial therapy: the results of the «KANT» project

Abstract

Objective. To determine the level of basic knowledge of senior students of medical universities in the rational use of AMP. Materials and Methods. Analysis of an anonymous multicenter survey in the framework of the “KANT” project (the full name of the project is “Physicians’ (Students ’) knowledge in antimicrobials usage”), conducted in 2018–2019 in 6 cities of Russia and Kyrgyzstan. Results. The study revealed a low level of knowledge of senior students in the field of antibiotic therapy and the empirical use of AMP. The best results are shown by students when answering questions “time interval for evaluating the effectiveness of starting antimicrobial therapy”, “rationality and the period of changing AMP with a positive clinical effect”, and “choice of tactics for treating acute tonsillitis/pharyngitis”; the worst – for questions “choice of first-line AMP in the treatment of various infections”, “choice of adjuvant drugs for bacterial infections of the respiratory tract”, and “determination of irrational combinations of AMP”. Conclusions. According to the results of this study, senior students showed a low level of knowledge in the basic issues of the rational use of AMP and the principles of antibiotic therapy in general, which indicates the urgent need for additional educational activities among this category of respondents and an increase in the number of academic hours in the disciplines “Pharmacology” and “Clinical” pharmacology "in universities.

Keywords

• questioning
• antimicrobials
• rational antibacterial therapy
• students
• level of knowledge