Knowledge of community pharmacists about antibiotics, and their perceptions and practices regarding antimicrobial stewardship: a cross-sectional study in Punjab, Pakistan

Knowledge of community pharmacists about antibiotics, and their perceptions and practices regarding antimicrobial stewardship: a cross-sectional study in Punjab, Pakistan Muhammad Rehan Sarwar,1,2 Anum Saqib,1 Sadia Iftikhar,2 Tayyaba Sadiq3 1Department of Pharmacy, Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur, 2Akhtar Saeed College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Lahore, 3Department of Pharmacy, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan Objective: To evaluate the knowledge of community pharmacists about antibiotics, and their perceptions and practices toward antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) in Punjab, Pakistan.Materials and methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among community pharmacists in Punjab, Pakistan from April 1, 2017 to May 31, 2017. A self-administered and pretested questionnaire was used for data collection. A simple random-sampling method was used to select community pharmacies. Independent-sample Mann–Whitney U tests, independent sample Kruskal–Wallis tests, and logistic regression analysis were performed with SPSS version 21.0.Results: Of the 414 pharmacists, 400 responded to the survey (response rate 96.6%). The participants had good knowledge about antibiotics. They showed positive perceptions, but poor practices regarding AMS. All of the participants were of the view that AMS program could be beneficial for health care professionals for improvement of patient care, and 78% (n