Introduction to Inpatient Antibiotics

Time: 60 minutes

Audience: Third-year medical students on their Inpatient Medicine Clerkship

Learning Objectives:

• Identify signs and symptoms of common inpatient infections

• Summarize appropriate initial work-up for admitted patients with suspected infection

• Give examples of “bugs” responsible for common infections

• Determine appropriate empiric antibiotic therapy for suspected infections

• Utilize local antibiogram effectively

Interactive digital “whiteboard” with live text-boxes to facility learner participations virtually. Click image for an example of a completed board.

Evaluations: There were no evaluations collected, however informal feedback from medical students included “I finally understand why we choose which antibiotic” and “really helpful!”

Reflections: I have given this session a total of six times to groups of 4-7 medical students. This educational session was initially an in-person session, using a whiteboard, however, due to the Covid-19 pandemic this was transitioned to a virtual session. It was a challenge to maintain the interactivity virtually, particularly given that this talk was intended to serve as practice utilizing resources (antibiotic spectrum and local antibiogram) to pick appropriate empiric antibiotics. In discussion with students they felt that the virtual version was still very helpful.