Prison antimicrobial surveillance project
What is the Prison pilot project?
This project aims to establish a surveillance system to monitor the use of antimicrobials (medicines used to treat infections) in Australian prisons. The 12-month pilot project involves working with the South Australian prisons to help establish the surveillance system.
Why is the Prison pilot project important?
There is limited data on the use of antimicrobials in prisons, and no approach has been implemented to monitor antimicrobial usage in these settings.
To address this gap, NAUSP is currently doing a 12-month pilot project looking at structuring the surveillance of antimicrobial usage in South Australian public and private prisons.
Prison online portal
For South Australian prisons participating in the pilot, registered users can enter the online portal using the following link Prison Portal.
Prison Project aims
Through the collaborative efforts with the South Australian prisons, we aim to:
- Identify the data points to be collected and make a standard method for collection and submission of the data collected
- Find the best way to group the prisons based on relevant characteristics to enable comparisons in antimicrobial use
- Create meaningful reports that will be useful for healthcare staff within the prisons
- Provide training for healthcare staff within the participating prisons so that they can access and effectively use their data to support antimicrobial stewardship activities.
Further information
For further information of the prison pilot project, contact the project lead surveillance officer.