Our aim is to provide a simple, empirical approach to the treatment of common infections, promote the safe use of antibiotics and minimise the emergence of bacterial resistance in the community.

Become an antibiotic guardian

In Dorset we follow South Central Antibiotic Network (SCAN) guidance when prescribing antimicrobials.

Key priorities from the guidance:

  • 5 days prescribing – revising prescribing course length for common conditions e.g. acute sinusitis, acute exacerbations of COPD

  • Emphasise reduction in broad spectrum antibiotic prescribing, supported by penicillin allergy review in clinical records to further reduce demand

  • Promote effective empirical treatment of urinary tract infection (UTI) in women over 70 years with nitrofurantoin first line where appropriate to reduce emerging resistance patterns to trimethoprim

When accessing penicillin allergy tools such as those published by NHS Lothian Group may assist.

NHS England has developed resources to help reduce the impact of antibiotic resistance. Refer to the AMR toolkit for more information. 

The NHS England Workforce Training and Education YouTube channel has videos for both primary and secondary care to help make informed decisions regarding the prescription, dispensing and use of antibiotics. 

Primary care antibiotic prescribing

Secondary care antibiotic prescribing

Optimising antimicrobial duration

The UK second five-year national action plan continues to promote optimal use of antimicrobials to ensure safe and effective patient care by strengthening antimicrobial stewardship programmes which should include the review of dose and duration of antimicrobial prescriptions.  

There is also an ambition to reduce UK antimicrobial use in humans by 5% by 2029. Optimising the duration of antibiotic use supports delivery of both these key requirements, and NICE publish antimicrobial stewardship guidance that provides evidence based recommendations for 5 day duration of antibiotic use.  

These PrescQIPP dashboards use routine primary care antimicrobial prescribing data from ePACT2 analysis to report metrics that can be used to optimise duration of antibiotic use in primary care.  

Optimising antimicrobial duration dashboard – Amoxicillin 500mg capsules  

Optimising antimicrobial duration dashboard – Doxycycline 100mg capsules  

PQS 25/26 encourages an increase in the 5 day prescribing of Amoxicillin or Doxycycline in adults for common infections. The dashboards will need to be filtered to remove people < 19 years of age.

PrescQIPP AMS Virtual professional reference group: 

Quarterly virtual meeting to highlight new AMR workstream initiatives, support implementation and share the learning from systems. Register here