By Christie Cabral, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Academic Primary Care , University of Bristol

As a social anthropologist, I’ve been investigating why antibiotics are overused for over a decade and using the insights gained to develop antibiotic stewardship interventions. For World Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Awareness Week, I am writing about three key insights from my research.

1. The role of ‘Explanatory Models’ for illness and treatment: the influence on consulting and prescribing behaviours

Explanatory models are the set of linked ideas or theories that we each have in our minds about an illness and the possible treatments. These inform what we do as a patient, deciding whether to consult, or as a clinician deciding whether to prescribe.

The (simplified) biomedical model for the infections is of two types: viral or bacterial. Antibiotics treat bacterial infections but are ineffective for viral infections. So, it’s simple, no one … Read more

Guest blog by Professor Alan Emond, Emeritus Professor of Child Health, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol

SafeTea is a national campaign which aims to reduce hot drink scalds to young children and promote burns first aid. The launch of the intervention will be on 16 October 2019, National Burn Awareness Day. The target audience is parents, grandparents and carers of children under 5 across the UK.

Primary care centres can participate in the campaign by:

displaying posters, flyers or videos that are freely available on the SafeTea website.
by following us on social media @SafeTeaCampaign on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube
by taking the SafeTea pledge.

The key messages of the campaign are to:

Keep hot drinks away from young children
Never carry a hot drink whilst carrying a baby
Never pass a hot drink over the heads of young children
Make a

Tag: Child health

SafeTea: An online intervention to prevent hot drink scalds in small children and improve burn first aid