Antimicrobial Resistance Essay

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Recommended: Risks of continual overuse of antibiotics

Antimicrobial Resistance
“Antibiotics and similar drugs, together called antimicrobial agents, have been used for the last 70 years to treat patients who have infectious diseases. Since the 1940s, these drugs have greatly reduced illness and death from infectious diseases. However, these drugs have been used so widely and for so long that the infectious organisms the antibiotics are designed to kill have adapted to them, making the drugs less effective” (CDC, 2016). Statistics have been shown by the CDC that at least 23,000 people die each year from infections that are resistant to antibiotics. This is a main concern for health care providers around the world.
Physicians overprescribing medications is becoming a worldwide problem in the healthcare. …show more content…

Hand hygiene and other infection control measures are extremely important for healthcare workers, patients, and visitors to follow in a health care setting when decrease the risk of spreading the infection. Physicians need to be more careful in regards to over prescribing medications. They need to be more thorough when deciding on what antibiotic to choose. If an infection is present it is important to get the correct cultures so that patient is treated correctly. In my work setting our infectious disease doctor will prescribe a certain drug for prophylaxis until the cultures are resulted. Once the cultures come back, he will adjust medication and doses based off of the sensitivity list. It is our jobs as nurses to realize that if our patient’s antibiotic is not sensitive to the infection we have to notify the physician so they can be placed on the proper treatment. Patients can help decrease antimicrobial resistance by taking medication as prescribed. As nurses, we need to educate them about making sure to not skip doses and complete the whole prescription even when starting to feel better. It is important that patients know not to save an antibiotic and take it when you start to feel sick; this can lead to many other health issues and may cause your body to become resistant to the

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