Syndromic Testing and Antimicrobial Stewardship

Learn about the value of a syndromic approach to infectious disease testing

This course offers healthcare professionals the chance to explore the background, benefits, and challenges of a syndromic approach to the diagnosis of clinical infections.

You’ll use clinical case studies to better understand the real-life application of the syndromic testing system and learn about the medical indications which align with a syndromic approach.

Understand the use of syndromic testing for infectious disease diagnosis and its role in AMS

Rapid syndromic testing aims to speed up the medical diagnosis of defined infectious diseases.

In a hospital setting, this is key to improving patient outcomes and has been shown by numerous studies to be cost-effective and clinically useful.

Under the guidance of experts at BSAC, you’ll learn how to identify clinical conditions which require rapid syndromic testing and analyse its role in antimicrobial stewardship.

Explore rapid syndromic testing as a point-of-care diagnosis tool

When it comes to antimicrobial stewardship, rapid syndromic testing tools have been shown to improve patient care for those that test positive, with shorter courses of antibiotics recorded when compared to diagnosis delivered by standard testing methods.

You’ll explore the opportunities and challenges of using syndromic testing as a rapid treatment response.

By the end of the course, you’ll understand the value of syndromic testing in practice and how it can impact existing antimicrobial stewardship programs.

This course is designed for healthcare professionals, in particular microbiologists and clinicians, who’d like to gain an understanding of how syndromic testing in the lab can aid rapid diagnostics within a clinical setting, as well as the implications of this for existing antimicrobial stewardship programs.

The course has been approved by the Royal College of Pathologists at a level of 6 credits.

• Introduction to Syndromic testing and AMS
• Welcome to the course
• Introduction to Syndromic testing
• The Role of Syndromic testing in AMS programs
• End of Week 1
• Evaluating Syndromic testing and its clinical uses
• Cost-effectiveness of Syndromic testing
• Rapid Syndromic testing in acute admissions units
• Use of Syndromic testing in paediatrics
• Summarising the use of Syndromic testing to improve AMS programs
• End of Week 2