Assessing the Impact of a Structured Pharmacy Education Program on Knowledge, Understanding, and Role of Pharmacists in Antimicrobial Stewardship

The study will commence after obtaining the ethical clearance from the Institutional Ethics Committee, Kasturba Medical College and Kasturba Hospital, Manipal and CTRI approval. The participants who meet the eligibility criteria will receive an information sheet and written informed consent. The quantitative online questionnaire will be sent to the participants to collect data. A separate description regarding voluntary participation will be added to the form. Over the next 4 months, the structured AMS education program will be conducted in sequential modules: on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month, participants will join 4:00–8:00 PM IST live online lectures through MS Teams covering clinical microbiology, pharmacology, infectious diseases, antimicrobial and diagnostic stewardship, clinical pharmacy, and ethics/leadership; each lecture will be followed by an interactive quiz delivered, or short gamified exercises to reinforce key concepts. At the end of the program, a week of hands-on bedside training at Kasturba Hospital will immerse participants in real-time antimicrobial stewardship rounds, case discussions, and prescription reviews under the mentorship of clinical microbiologists, infectious disease physicians,, and clinical pharmacists. Participants will also complete a research assignment immediately upon course completion. An online post-test identical in structure to the baseline questionnaire will be administered, and follow-up interviews will be scheduled within two weeks to qualitatively assess immediate learning and barriers to application. Six months after the final lecture, participants will again receive the same questionnaire via email with two reminder prompts at one- and two-week intervals, followed by a final round of MS Teams interviews to evaluate knowledge retention, sustained changes in practice, and perceived impact on their AMS role. Throughout the study, all data will be timestamped, anonymized, and stored on secure institutional and interview transcripts maintained in encrypted files.