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Anyone know good resources for antibiotics? I've found this but i'm not sure how applicable it is to Canadian guidelines (http://www.bpac.org.nz/Supplement/2013/July/docs/Antibioitcs_guide_2013.pdf).

 

Our school hasn't covered micb and antibiotics at all and whenever I'm shadowing I feel clueless on how they choose the antibiotics. Or is it completely unnecessary to learn on my own as a M2 and would I get to it in my rotations? 

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Anyone know good resources for antibiotics? I've found this but i'm not sure how applicable it is to Canadian guidelines (http://www.bpac.org.nz/Supplement/2013/July/docs/Antibioitcs_guide_2013.pdf).

 

Our school hasn't covered micb and antibiotics at all and whenever I'm shadowing I feel clueless on how they choose the antibiotics. Or is it completely unnecessary to learn on my own as a M2 and would I get to it in my rotations? 

 

Antibiotics are generally confusing until clerkship rolls around - you're hardly alone on that.

 

The resource you linked is a decent one. You're right, Canadian practices will differ in the actual choice, but that resource presents the choice in a very useful way. Best advice I ever got in clerkship, from an Infectious Diseases physician, is to approach antibiotic choice in a systematic way. First, determine clinically what kind of infection you think the patient has. That's the hard choice. Then, determine what bugs are most likely to cause that infection - which your resource helpfully states. All you need to do is look up what those bugs are. Then, pick an antibiotic that covers all those bugs (and can get to the site of infection - some antibiotics don't distribute evenly).

 

For example, cellulitis is a fairly common infection. It is usually caused by streptococci or staphylococcus species, both of which are gram positives. Cephalexin works very well against gram positives and has good skin penetrance. So, we use Cephalexin to treat cellulitis.

 

It's alright if you don't have a great grasp of what antibiotics cover what types of bugs at this stage. That'll come with experience. You can generally work backwards to get an understanding of what a particular antibiotic covers as well - if you know that Cephalexin is used to treat cellulitis, you can determine that it has good gram positive coverage, because of course, that's what tends to cause cellulitis in the first place!

 

If you're looking for a decent Canadian resource, the Anti-infective Guidelines for Community-acquired infections is a common one. Those going into Internal and Pediatrics might need something more beefy towards the end of their training, but for most practitioners and for students, it's pretty good, user-friendly resource.

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