Antibiotic stewardship tools, audits and other resources
| Site: | Royal College of General Practitioners - Online Learning Environment |
| Course: | TARGET antibiotics toolkit hub |
| Book: | Antibiotic stewardship tools, audits and other resources |
| Printed by: | Guest user |
| Date: | Tuesday, 21 July 2026, 7:50 AM |
Description
Resources to support antimicrobial stewardship in your practice, including audit templates and tools to support reviewing patients on long term and repeat antibiotics, self assessment checklists, action planning templates and posters and videos for clinical waiting areas.
Version
1.0, November 2021.
Antibiotic stewardship tools, audits and other resources
Access the TARGET antibiotic stewardship tools, audits templates and other resources through the tiles below or using the contents page. All resources have been developed in collaboration with clinicians and patients and have received the Crystal Mark for Plain English.
How to..? Resources
This series supports the review of antimicrobial use for treatment and prevention of recurrent UTI, acne and COPD.
Audit toolkits
These audit templates can be used to assess managing of infection against prescribing guidelines.
Self-assessment checklist
This checklist is for GPs and commissioning groups to assess current antibiotic prescribing practice.
Action planning
This template can be used by teams to plan and monitor implementation of the TARGET toolkit.
Posters for clinical and waiting areas
Posters to be used to raise awareness of the importance of appropriate antibiotic use.
Videos for clinical and waiting areas
Videos to be used to raise awareness of the importance of appropriate antibiotic use
How to..? Resources (repeat and long term antibiotics)
The ‘How to…?’ series aims to support primary care teams to review the appropriateness of antimicrobials in the evidence-based treatment and prevention of the following conditions. Use the ‘How to…’ resources to manage and review adults on long-term and repeated antibiotics. The ‘How to…’ worked examples are resources designed to be used with the TARGET ‘How to…’ guides for the review of antibiotic prescribing in primary care.
Recurrent UTI
Acne Vulgaris
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
You can access the search strategy guides and documents for EMIS, SystmOne and Vision, as outlined in the How to guides by downloading this zip file. Please refer to the instruction guides.
Please provide feedback via this short questionnaire to enable continual monitoring and update of the information in the booklets.
Audit toolkits
Use these audit templates to assess your management of infection against current prescribing guidelines developed by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) / Public Health England (PHE, now UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA)). The audits are designed to measure compliance against this guidance. For ease of use, each audit is available in both Microsoft Word and Excel format; the Excel version will automatically calculate your percentage compliance against guidelines.
If you have any comments or feedback please respond to the questionnaire or email TARGETantibiotics@ukhsa.gov.uk.
Self-assessment checklist
Checklist to measure your current antibiotic prescribing practice.
This tool is a short questionnaire for use by antibiotic prescribers and Commissioning groups to assess antibiotic prescribing.
To begin: Antimicrobial Stewardship Self-Assessment Checklist - select whether you are a GP or CCG representative:
Action planning
Action planning within a practice or out of hours team is essential to move the intentions into actual actions. It is essential to plan and monitor implementation of the TARGET Antibiotics Toolkit appropriately and this is best achieved by developing a local antibiotic action plan, either for your CCG or your practice. It is important that this plan is developed using a whole team approach so that everyone who is involved in communication and prescribing around antibiotics has had the opportunity to contribute.
The practice action plan should ideally set out current antibiotic usage and an outline of future plans. This should include:
- Overall aim for change in antibiotic use and defined measurable targets (use a locally agreed reduction target)
- How the practice aims to achieve this implementation, with responsibilities for actions
- How leaflets can be incorporated into the practice computer, and by whom and when
- Who is responsible for posters/videos
- Audit plans and responsible staff member
Action plan template and examples
Posters for clinical and waiting areas
Posters for use in clinical areas to raise awareness of the importance of appropriate antibiotic use. The resources can make a difference to the patients’ expectations on antibiotic prescribing.
Videos for clinical and waiting areas
Access the videos to be displayed on TVs in patient waiting areas. The resources aim to raise awareness of the importance of appropriate antibiotic use and can make a difference to the patients’ expectations on antibiotic prescribing.
Department of Health
- NHS antibiotic video - hedgehog (1 MB WMV)
- NHS antibiotic video - duck (1 MB WMV)
- NHS antibiotic video - dog and tree (1 MB WMV)
- NHS antibiotic video - cat and butterfly (1 MB WMV)
- NHS antibiotic video - parrot (1 MB WMV)
Health Education England (HEE)
An HEE antimicrobial resistance animation has been created to help prescribers assess and care for a patient who incorrectly feels they should be prescribed an antibiotic.