There are several key resources available to pharmacy teams in their role supporting patients and to ensure patients and members of the public receive consistent messages from GPs, nurses and pharmacists themselves.

The TARGET Antibiotics Toolkit (where TARGET stands for Treat Antibiotics Responsibly, Guidance, Education, Tools includes a range of resources. Initially developed for GP practices by the RCGP, some of the resources have been adapted for use within community pharmacy and are freely available via its website.

Also of relevance to pharmacy teams is a patient information leaflet Treating Your Infection, from Public Health England (see Figure 3 above). This leaflet can be used during consultations and given to patients to reinforce key messages. It outlines the usual duration of common viral infections, self-care advice and when to seek help. Information on why antibiotics should only be taken when they are really needed is also provided.

The leaflet is also part of the Help Us Help You pharmacy campaign and is available through the Keep Antibiotics Working campaign for GP practices and out-of-hours services, ensuring consistent messaging across the whole health system.

A recent trial demonstrated that use of the leaflet facilitated pharmacy staff giving more self-care advice and decreased antibiotic referrals to GPs.

NICE antimicrobial prescribing guidelines: Since 2016, NICE has been publishing national evidence-based antimicrobial prescribing information for all care settings. They focus on bacterial infections and appropriate antibiotic use.

Each guideline topic features a visual summary of the recommendations, a guideline and an evidence review. The visual summary is an overview of the guideline recommendations. It includes a prescribing table to support shared antimicrobial prescribing decisions in line with a health professional’s own clinical judgement.

Pharmacy teams may wish to print the visual summaries and have them available to refer to within the pharmacy.