A questionnaire based survey on the knowledge, attitude and practices about antimicrobial resistance and usage among the MBBS students and doctors of a tertiary care teaching Hospital in Silchar, Assam, India

Background: Antimicrobials are agents used to kill or inhibit growth of microorganisms. Now they are most commonly used as well as misused medicine too. Misuse of these agents lead to development of resistance which is now a global concern. Public awareness about antimicrobial resistance is a key factor in combating the situation which includes educating doctors and health care professionals. So the current study is undertaken to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) related to antibiotic resistance and usage and among the MBBS students and doctors.Methods: A pre-formed duly validated questionnaire was distributed among the study group and their KAP regarding antimicrobial usage and resistance was assessed by Likert scale whose responses ranges from strongly agree to strongly disagree and always to never. Some questions were of true/false type. One question was choosing the correct answer. In this study, questionnaires were distributed among 270 participants out of which 188 were MBBS students and 82 were doctors. After collection, data were entered in Microsoft excel and simple descriptive statistics were used to generate frequencies, percentage and proportions. Wherever possible the chi-square test or fisher exact test was done to find out any association. * p<0.05 was taken as significant.Results: Response rate was 100% among the study populations. Out of 270 study population, 91% (245) had the knowledge that indiscriminate use of antibiotics cause ineffective treatment with a considerable difference in knowledge between undergraduates and doctors (p<0.05). Also it causes bacterial resistance (96.3%). Around 89% of the total participants agreed that bacteria do not cause common cold and influenza.Conclusions: This study revealed that most of the study population, both undergraduates and doctors were well aware about the emerging problem of antimicrobial resistance. However, responses related to their practices were quite varied. Hence, further educational interventions are needed to improve their practices towards antibiotics use in both the study groups