A cross-sectional survey of knowledge, perceptions and practice of antimicrobial stewardship concepts among university non-health professional undergraduate students in southwest Nigeria

Background: Non-health professional students (NHPS) can be a veritable tool in the advocacy for antimicrobial stewardship in a community if imbued with adequate knowledge and correct perceptions. However, little is known about the knowledge, perceptions, and practice (KPP) of antimicrobial stewardship among NHPS.Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the KPP of antimicrobial stewardship among NHPS.Methods: A cross-sectional survey of KPP of antimicrobial stewardship was carried out among 600 consecutively selected NHPS at Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria, using a pretested 30-item self-administered questionnaire with varying options and a 5-point Likert scale. Each correct answer in the knowledge domain was scored “1” and incorrect “0” and a total of eleven points were available. The modified Bloom’s cut-off points were used to grade the knowledge into good (≥9 points), moderate (7-8 points) and poor (≤6 points). The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to assess the differences in perceptions among the groups.Results: Many of the respondents (319;53.2%) were male, 274 (45.7%) had used antimicrobials without advice from physicians or pharmacists. The respondents (387; 64.5%) scored ≤ 6.0 of the total 11.0 on the knowledge scale and 430 (71.7%) with a significant difference between faculties (p<0.001) strongly agreed or agreed that “everyone needs to take responsibility for using antimicrobials responsibly”.Conclusions: Many of the non-health professional students had poor knowledge of antimicrobial stewardship and had practices that are antithetical to the concept. However, the majority perceived correctly, that appropriate use of antimicrobials was a collective responsibility.Keywords: Antimicrobial; stewardship; non-health professional; knowledge; Nigeri