Antibiotic Research in Care Homes (ARCH) WP2&3
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Antibiotic Research in Care Homes (ARCH); Understanding and improving antimicrobial prescribing in care homes: a multidisciplinary approach. Work Packages 2 & 3
IRAS ID
_240826
Contact name
Charis Marwick
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Dundee
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
14/ES/0015, REC ref for Work Package 1; 2016MC03, Tayside ref for Work Package 1
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
Antibiotics are essential in modern healthcare to treat infections but bacteria develop ways of surviving their effects and develop resistance to them. Previous research has found that antibiotics are often used when they are not needed, which increases this effect. Research shows that antibiotic use among care home residents is high, as is antimicrobial resistance and other adverse effects of antibiotic use. Care home residents are vulnerable to infections so prescribing decisions are not straightforward and the amount of antibiotics used in different care homes varies significantly. There is general agreement that antibiotic use in care homes could and should be safely reduced but there is limited evidence about how this can be achieved in this complex, multi-stakeholder context, as most research on finding ways to safely reduce antibiotic use has been carried out in hospitals or GP surgeries rather than care homes. To design effective approaches to reducing antibiotic prescribing for care home residents we need to understand more about how, when and why they get prescribed from the perspectives of nurses, carers, GPs, and residents and their relatives.
This study will systemically examine the social, cultural and behavioural determinants of antibiotic use in care homes. This will be achieved through novel multidisciplinary collaboration including epidemiology, sociology, social anthropology, behavioural health psychology, and implementation science. We will employ ethnographic observations and interviews with behavioural psychology interviews and questionnaires to obtain extensive and rich data over these two work packages. The results will be used to inform the development co-design and optimisation of an intervention to safely reduce antimicrobial use while continuing to ensure effective treatment.
REC name
London - Camberwell St Giles Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/LO/1239
Date of REC Opinion
27 Jul 2018
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion