ABSTRACT

Antimicrobial stewardship programs entails the optimal usage of antimicrobial agents to improve patient outcomes, reduce antimicrobial resistance and health related infections, saving health care cost (WHO 2019). Antimicrobial resistance when closely viewed is an inevitable consequence of bacterial evolution and would be evident in the absence of antimicrobial agent exposure (John et al., 2011) and as such a bases for this study.

The goal of this study is to understand the opinions of healthcare professionals on policies and implementation of recommended strategies (AMS programs) in tackling antimicrobial stewardship at different levels of healthcare (secondary and tertiary healthcare facilities) in Nigeria, Edo state.

A well-structured questionnaire was used to collect data. A cross sectional survey involving 135 doctors at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) and Edo Specialist Hospital. The data collected from the survey were entered in Microsoft excel and analyzed in IBM SPSS version 25. Descriptive analysis was performed.

About 65.9% of the respondents have heard about antimicrobial stewardship program and 42.2% think they have sufficient knowledge on antimicrobial stewardship, and 53(39.3%) of doctors agreed that ASP improves quality of patient care and reduces antibiotics use with cost savings. A total of 112 (83.0%) advocated that developing and issuing a new institutional guideline for rational and antimicrobial was effective for enhancing ASP.

The study showed that majority of the physicians had good knowledge on antimicrobial stewardship programs.