Original ResearchGeneral surgeon's antibiotic stewardship: Climbing the Rogers Diffusion of Innovation Curve-Prospective Cohort Study

•The concordance of general surgeons with antibiotic stewardship programs is contentious.•The Rogers Diffusion of Innovation Curve visualises the challenge of improving antibiotic governance amongst surgeons.•General surgeons are disengaged with antibiotic governance.

IntroductionThe primary aim of this study was to establish concordance of general surgeon's prescribing practice with local IV-oral antibiotic guidelines. The secondary aim was to evaluate the effect of introducing educational antibiotic measures. The Rogers Diffusion of Innovation Model was used to explore the adoption of antibiotic stewardship practices.MethodsIn this prospective, cohort study, data was collected on 100 pre and 100 post awareness intervention programme patients. The educational intervention comprised raising awareness of a) the guidelines b) pre-intervention results c) introducing an IV-oral antibiotic prompt sheet. The concordance with local guidelines was compared between pre- and post-intervention groups using Fisher's Exact Test or Pearson's Chi Test (SPSS Statistics V22).ResultsThe concordance of general surgical doctors with local IV-oral antibiotic guidelines was poor and did not improve significantly following the awareness intervention programme. There was no uptake of the antibiotic prompt sheet. There was a trend towards increase in the number of patients switched from IV to oral antibiotics at 48-72 h and significant increase (p < 0.05) in number of patients with clearly documented intention to review IV antibiotics.ConclusionAntibiotic governance measures failed to inspire even an initial group of innovators to use the antibiotic prompt sheets. It appears educational measures are effective in improving prescribing behavior and intent amongst a group of early adopters, but this fails to reach a critical mass. In order to improve antibiotic governance and embark upon the Rogers Diffusion of Innovation Curve, more must be done to engage general surgical doctors in timely, judicious antibiotic prescribing.