#60: Antibiotic mythbusting. With Dr Ri Scarborough

Dr Riati Scarboroughis is a researcher at the National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship and a PhD fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD focuses on improving our understanding of the conscious and subconscious motivations behind suboptimal antimicrobial prescribing in Australian veterinary practices, and designing sustainable strategies to support better antimicrobial prescribing in veterinarians. Ri is particularly interested in the use of social norms and nudges to modify behaviour. 

And it's these behaviours that we discuss in this episode. Ri highlights some common areas where many vet practices could rethink their antibiotic prescribing protocols, with a great discussion on WHY it's so important.  We cover topics like

• Why the old antibiotic mantra 'finish the course' is giving way to 'shorter is better"
• Antimicrobial dosing: you can't always trust the label
• UTIs - choose Amoxycillin over Amoxyclav or Convenia
• Bacteriuria does not always require antimicrobials
• Catfight abscesses - antimicrobials rarely needed
• Surgical antimicrobial prophylaxis - get the timing right

A word of warning: some of these topics might wake up an annoying little voice in the back of your head that will bother you every time you head into the dispensary for those AB's, but we think it's worth it. See it as a little nudge!

Here are the resources as promised in the episode. 

Thanks to the SVS Pathology Network, who our Australian listeners will know as Vetnostics in NSW, QML Vetnostics in Queensland, TML Vetnostics in Tasmania, ASAP in Victoria and Vetpath in WA, for supporting the podcast and introducing us to Ri and her work. Have a look at this video about Maldi TOF spectrometry - the technology that explains why SVS clients will now get super-fast turnaround times for their microbiology testing.

Go to thevetvault.com for show notes and to check out our guests’ favourite books, podcasts and everything else we talk about in the show.

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