Antibiotic Policies: Fighting Resistance

This volume examines many of the crucial issues of resistance in a clinical context, with an emphasis on MRSA; surely the greatest challenge to our antibiotic and infection control policies that modern health care systems have ever seen. Other chapters explore the psychology of prescribing, modern management techniques as an adjunct to antibiotic policies, and the less obvious downsides of antibiotic use.Antibiotic resistance has reached epidemic proportions in most hospitals and many communities around the world. While control methods have traditionally (and usually unsuccessfully) relied on preventing cross infection it is increasingly obvious that new solutions are needed. There is growing evidence that the solution will lie in more careful use of antibiotics in the future. The golden age of antibiotic therapy has gone, probably for good and prescribers (and society at large) will have to accept that, in future, antibiotics will not be the "cure all" we have been accustomed to. This book addresses many of the key issues taxing our society and hospitals in an era of epidemic resistance and shortage of new antibiotics. Written by internationally renowned experts in the field, this volume will provide practical advice and inform control strategies for the most urgent of problems related to antibiotic resistance epidemic for years to come. Antibiotic Policies: Fighting Resistance is an ideal volume for health professionals with an interest in this field.