Guidelines : Antimicrobial guidelines

Surrey Heartlands Antimicrobial Stewardship Guidelines have been produced to draw together the recommendations from NICE and local best practice advice to support primary care healthcare providers in meeting the requirements of the Health and Social Care Act.

The Health and Social care Act (2008) mandates healthcare providers to have policies and procedures in place that will help to prevent and control infections including ensuring appropriate antimicrobial use to optimise patient outcomes and to reduce the risk of adverse events and antimicrobial resistance (criteria 3). 
 

The Surrey Heartlands APC have approved the "Nitrofurantoin Prescribing and Monitoring Guidance for Primary Care".

The guidance supports the recommendation for the use of nitrofurantoin in treating UTI (lower) and reinforces the need for testing and monitoring when used longterm/for prophylaxis and highlights its association with pulmonary symptons - see document below for details.

UPDATED FEBRUARY 2022 -

APPLIES TO ANTIMICROBIAL SUSCEPTABILITY TESTING (AST) FROM SURREY & SUSSEX HEALTHCARE NHS TRUST (SASH) ONLY
The Surrey Heartlands integrated care system Area Prescribing Committee (APC) agree to the current guidance as ‘interim’ for issuing by SASH until a Surrey Heartlands wide approach is agreed. 

All local Trusts are using the microguide app to host their antimicrobial guidelines.

Visit this link and search for the Trust using the "Search" box at the top, right of the screen

https://viewer.microguide.global/mo

Documents and links for Primary Care antibiotic guidelines can be found at the bottom of this page

Following the combination of the Public Health England (PHE) guidance with NICE guidance, the APC agreed to adopt the ‘NICE/PHE Summary of antimicrobial prescribing guidance-managing common infections’ without alteration - see link below to the "Antibiotic Guidelines - Public Health/NICE Summary tables" for the most up to date guidance.

This guidance can also be accessed via 'TARGET Toolkit' (web links below).
The "Antibiotic Signposting" document for the list of CCGs adopting the guidance together with local Microbiology and out of hours contact details has been updated (September 2019) to reflect the adoption of the NICE/PHE combined guidance (please see below).