Advanced Antimicrobial Stewardship and Resistance Training Course

Overview

Advanced Antimicrobial Stewardship and Resistance Training Course is a one-week course for healthcare leaders, stewardship teams, pharmacists, infection specialists, laboratory leaders, quality leaders, and clinical operations managers who leave with an Antimicrobial Stewardship Improvement Dossier. Participants connect antimicrobial stewardship, antimicrobial resistance, diagnostic stewardship, prospective audit and feedback, and antimicrobial use surveillance with governance, prescribing review, behavior change, equity, and sustained improvement. Agile Leaders Training Center presents antimicrobial stewardship as an organizational governance and improvement discipline.

Who Should Attend

• Healthcare governance functions responsible for stewardship authority, resources, accountability, and escalation
• Pharmacy and medicines-management functions responsible for antimicrobial use review and intervention delivery
• Infection and clinical functions responsible for prescribing decisions, safety, and interdisciplinary practice
• Laboratory functions responsible for specimen pathways, susceptibility results, and surveillance data
• Quality and improvement functions responsible for measures, feedback, equity, and sustained change
• Clinical operations functions responsible for workflows, decision rights, and service-level implementation

The course assumes participants already govern healthcare services, prescribing systems, laboratory interfaces, or improvement work and leaves out introductory microbiology, individual patient treatment advice, and infection-control certification.

Departments and Industries

The course supports departments and industries responsible for antimicrobial governance, diagnostics, prescribing systems, and healthcare improvement.

• Hospitals, clinics, and integrated care networks
• Pharmacy, medicines management, and clinical governance departments
• Microbiology, laboratory, and diagnostic services
• Quality, patient safety, and infection prevention functions
• Public health, humanitarian health, and community care organizations
• Health technology, insurance, and care-management services

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Analyze stewardship governance, roles, and decision rights
• Use resistance, antimicrobial use, and laboratory data for prioritization
• Apply diagnostic and prescribing-review pathways
• Build targeted stewardship interventions and behavior-change controls
• Evaluate feedback, equity, safety, and unintended effects
• Design measures and routines for sustained improvement

Course Agenda

Day 1: Governance and Resistance Context

• Stewardship Governance Charter and Accountability Map
• Multidisciplinary Role and Decision-Rights Matrix
• Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance Flow Map
• Local Antibiogram Interpretation Brief
• Equity and Access Risk Screen

Day 2: Diagnostics and Prescribing Review

• Diagnostic Stewardship Test-Decision Pathway
• Specimen Quality and Laboratory Interface Checklist
• Empiric Therapy Review and De-escalation Decision Guide
• Prospective Audit and Feedback Workflow
• Preauthorization and Exception-Control Matrix

Day 3: Intervention and Behavior Change

• Stewardship Intervention Selection Matrix
• Guideline and Order-Set Alignment Review
• Prescriber Behavior and Barrier Analysis
• Infection Prevention and Stewardship Interface Map
• Patient and Clinician Communication Plan

Day 4: Measurement and Sustainability

• Antimicrobial Use and Resistance Balanced Scorecard
• Data Quality and Denominator Validation Checklist
• Prescriber Feedback and Service-Level Reporting Pack
• Intervention Evaluation and Unintended-Effect Review
• Stewardship Sustainability and Capability Roadmap

Day 5: Stewardship Improvement Practice

• Exercise: Build Governance and Surveillance Foundations
• Exercise: Review Diagnostics and Antimicrobial Decisions
• Exercise: Design an Audit-and-Feedback Intervention
• Exercise: Evaluate Measures, Equity, and Sustainability
• Capstone Exercise: Antimicrobial Stewardship Improvement Dossier

Practical Exercises

The course uses suggested activities drawn from hospitals, diagnostic networks, community care, and health-support organizations.

• Suggested activity: map governance roles, surveillance inputs, laboratory dependencies, and equity risks for a selected service.
• Suggested activity: review a diagnostic and prescribing pathway, identify decision points, and structure prospective audit and feedback.
• Suggested activity: select interventions, analyze behavioral barriers, and design communication and implementation controls.
• Suggested activity: assemble measures, reporting routines, evaluation checks, and sustainability actions in the capstone dossier.

FAQs

Who suits advanced antimicrobial stewardship training, and what does it assume?

Advanced antimicrobial stewardship training suits experienced healthcare leaders and multidisciplinary teams who already manage prescribing, diagnostics, pharmacy, laboratory, quality, infection, or improvement systems and need to govern coordinated organizational action.

How does antimicrobial stewardship training differ from infection prevention training?

Antimicrobial stewardship training governs antimicrobial decisions, diagnostics, prescribing review, use measurement, and feedback, while infection prevention training focuses primarily on preventing transmission and controlling infection risks; effective organizations connect both disciplines.

How should antimicrobial use surveillance support stewardship decisions?

Antimicrobial use surveillance should combine valid denominators, prescribing patterns, resistance signals, service context, and review cadence so teams can prioritize problems, test interventions, and communicate results without treating one measure as a complete performance judgment.

What makes prospective audit and feedback effective?

Prospective audit and feedback is effective when review criteria, timing, reviewer authority, prescriber dialogue, exceptions, documentation, measures, and learning loops are explicit and integrated with clinical and operational workflows.

How does diagnostic stewardship contribute to antimicrobial resistance work?

Diagnostic stewardship contributes by aligning test selection, specimen quality, laboratory processes, result interpretation, and clinical decisions so antimicrobial choices use relevant evidence while surveillance data remain dependable.

Conclusion

The course connects governance, surveillance, diagnostics, prescribing review, intervention design, behavior change, measurement, equity, and sustainability. Participants take back an Antimicrobial Stewardship Improvement Dossier. The dossier changes organizational practice by making responsibilities, decision pathways, controls, measures, feedback routines, and improvement priorities explicit and reviewable.