Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to encourage the uptake of antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) principles into undergraduate education across medical, nursing, veterinary and allied health professional degrees; and what steps they will take to engage with academic institutions to ensure future prescribers are equipped to advocate and implement AMS practices effectively.

The NHS England antimicrobial resistance prescribing workstream has collaborated with the Workforce Training and Education directorate to co-produce, with stakeholders from university schools of pharmacy, an indicative curriculum and competency framework for antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial stewardship, as a part of the new initial education and training programme for United Kingdom pharmacists who will graduate with independent prescribing rights from 2025/26. The prescribing workstream has plans to make contact with the General Medical Council and Nursing and Midwifery Council during 2025/26 to establish how antimicrobial stewardship is taught and examined in undergraduate medical and nursing courses in England, and to support improvement as required.

The UK Health Security Agency has recently updated the antimicrobial prescribing and stewardship competency framework, which is applicable for health students and prescribing courses. The goal of the antimicrobial prescribing and stewardship competency framework is to improve the quality of antimicrobial treatment and stewardship, and therefore reduce the risks of inadequate, inappropriate, and adverse effects of antimicrobial treatment.

The Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) visits the vet schools annually to provide training to undergraduate students on antibiotic stewardship and the responsible use of medicines. The VMD also works with the Vet Schools Council, who are keen to promote antimicrobial research, and raises veterinary student awareness of the importance of the appropriate prescribing of antibiotics. As an example of this, they recently produced a white paper highlighting the importance of collecting and using farm level antibiotic use data to support responsible use of antibiotics.