Stabilire connessioni. Vi raccontiamo “Ampio Spettro*”. Un progetto per contrastare l’antibiotico resistenza

A gap seems to exist between clinical guidelines and the prescribing practices of General Practitioners with respect to the use of antibiotics. This is true especially in patients presenting with symptoms and signs of upper respiratory tract infections. The Broad-Spectrum project was established to ad- dress this issue: at the one hand, different research methods are applied to understand the determi- nants of inappropriate prescriptions of antibiotics; at the other hand, a nationwide distance learning course will be distributed among Italian General Practitioners with the aim of changing the actual prescribing habits of physicians, contemporarily addressing uncertainties faced by clinicians when planning their daily work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further aims of the project are to spread a culture of research and evidence-based teaching among the younger generations of General Practitioners, and to create a group of young professionals trained in medical research and teaching.We want to tell the story of this non-profit experience, carried out by a group of young doctors in training in General Practice - which was characterized by the continuous construction of connections: connections between clinicians and the academy and other institutions and associations such as the National Institute of Health, the Local Medical Boards, the Regional Health Trust of Sardinia and the Italian Society of Medical Education (SIPeM), between research and training, between the communi- cative and clinical aspects General Practice. Two features of this project are valuable. The first is that the identification of problems was done by the involved professionals who sought the methodological and institutional collaboration of others in the healthcare system to collect and analyse data perceived as important for daily practice with patients. The second is the choice of a training that is not flattened on a formalization of traditional teaching but is aimed to foster a change in everyday practice through reflection and independent thinking on the basis of context-specific evidence.