Some Ideas from the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (The Commission)

Some ideas from the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (the Commission) for activities and events for your health service organisation during Antibiotic Awareness Week (AAW).

Display posters

Download the AAW 2015 posters from the Commission’s AAW webpage and display them around your health service organisation, in your:

lifts, stairwells and foyer
medication rooms, pharmacy department and wards
outpatient clinic waiting areas and outpatient pharmacy
meeting rooms and executive unit.

Participate in the National Antimicrobial Prescribing Survey

The National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship is being supported by the Commission to coordinate the National Antimicrobial Prescribing Survey (NAPS) again in 2015. The data collection period commenced in September 2015. Healthcare services are advised to conduct the survey early so results will be available during AAW to enable local feedback and discussion. The NAPS team will also provide additional clinical support for facilities without infectious diseases specialists or antimicrobial pharmacists. If you would like to participate or need help planning the survey, please contact the NAPS team at visit the NAPS web site The Commission is also supporting the NAPS to improve participation rates and reporting

Use the AAW logo

Use the AAW logo in your email signature block, on meeting minutes, and in other correspondence. In 2014, some health service organisations printed the logo onto stickers and placed these on coffee cups during the week, posting photographs on social media.

Promote AAW on your intranet and screens

Ask your web team to place the AAW e-banner on your intranet page, or include an article on AAW on your staff intranet homepage, linking through to more details about the week and your planned activities. You could ask your IT Department to load the AAW screensaver on to all computers.

T-shirt and resources pack

The Commission has a limited number of AAW packs to help Australian health service organisations promote AAW. Each pack includes three t-shirts in three sizes, badgers, stickers and posters. More information about availability of packs, distribution and other details is available on the Commission’s AAW webpage:

Send out the pocket prescribing cards

Download the pocket cards from the Commission web site to laminate. Ask a senior clinician to circulate them to team members in advance of the week, or include them with the letter from the executive to clinical staff.

Use social media and join the discussion

If your health service organisation has a Facebook or Twitter account, use them to promote the week and your activities. Check your organisation’s social media policy before you begin. You can also participate in the global Twitter Chat on Wednesday 18 November 2015, coordinated by the European CDC. Organisations and experts from around the world including Australia, Canada, the US and Europe will be participating. Follow the Commission on Twitter@ACSQHC.

Involve local media
Speak to your media advisors or public relations team about how to involve local radio stations and newspapers

Watch the videos

You can learn more about antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial stewardship by watching or showing one or both of the following presentations, presented by clinical experts:

Dr Celia Cooper presents Think global – act local, a presentation focused on the global problem of antimicrobial resistance, and the role of antimicrobial stewardship in addressing antimicrobial resistance in hospital settings.
In Principles of antibiotic pharmacotherapy, Miss Caroline Chen outlines different classes of commonly used antibiotics, their spectrum of activity and issues to consider when prescribing and administering these commonly used agents.

Download the AAW presentations

The Commission has presentations that can be used by health professionals for raising awareness about appropriate antibiotic use and the problem of antimicrobial resistance. You can use or adapt these slides for presentations at Grand Rounds, or for team, unit or departmental meetings and education sessions. You could include in your presentation some local information, for example, ask:

a team or department to talk about ways they have improved antibiotic use, including the lessons learned in the improvement journey
a surgical team to discuss surgical prophylaxis
an infectious diseases team to give a case presentation focused on management of a specific clinical condition, and how antibiotic stewardship supported patient care
a nurse and pharmacist to be involved in the presentation to discuss their roles in antimicrobial stewardship as members of the multidisciplinary team.

Target professional groups

Run information sessions with specific professional groups and discuss their role in the appropriate use of antibiotics and antimicrobial stewardship. For example, organise ward-based education sessions with nurses, information session with pharmacists, or run a feedback session for prescribers detailing results of any antimicrobial prescribing audits and highlighting results against the Antimicrobial Stewardship Clinical Care Standard indicators. Consider having junior medical officers complete the online learning modules available from the Commission and NPSMedicineWise

Run an antibiotic awareness quiz

The Commission has a quiz available for download from the Commission website for AAW. You can use this as is, or adapt it to your local needs. You could circulate this in the lead up to the week, and then let everyone know the average score for the organisation during the week. Consider a prize for the team or department with the highest number of quizzes submitted and answered correctly. Answers for the quiz will be posted on the Commission website on Monday 16 November, at the beginning of Antibiotic Awareness Week.

Create an information display

Choose a prominent area of the hospital, with resources from the Commission as well as local resources from your hospital or jurisdictional health department, and from NPSMedicineWise. You could also:

hand out written material with details of where to find local policies, procedures, and local processes for seeking specialist advice or referral, as well as contact details of antimicrobial stewardship team members
have a range of health professionals rostered to staff the display, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, managers – to reflect the multidisciplinary nature of good antibiotic management
create a display of local information relevant to antibiotic use, for example, antibiotic usage audit results, or local resistance and susceptibility information
follow the creative idea of a hospital in 2013 and create a mobile AAW trolley. The hospital decorated a trolley with AAW posters, resistance fighter t-shirts, MINDME pocket cards and a quiz entry box. You can move the trolley around your health service organisation throughout the week to promote awareness and discussion among staff members.

Conductconsumer information sessions

Inform consumers (including patients and their carers) about the reasons why antibiotics need to be used carefully, and how they can do so. You can distribute written information to consumers about the Antimicrobial Stewardship Clinical Care Standard, and what it means for patients and consumers. Access consumer information sheets at NPS MedicineWise also has a range of resources available at

Take the antibiotic resistance fighter pledge
NPS MedicineWise is encouraging all health professionals to pledge to join the fight against antibiotic resistance. A web app on the NPS MedicineWise web site allows you to add the suburb of your workplace to the national map of resistance fighters. After making the pledge, you will be able to generate a personalised antibiotic resistance fighter certificate to print and display in your health service organisation, or share in social media networks. Visit