Drug Resistant Infections: More Than Meets the Eye

Publication Summary

This is a health consumer’s story on AMR as part of a collaborative awareness building project. Narrative stories are accessible and engaging formats for multiple audiences, including patients, family members, healthcare providers, and policy makers. Public health and antimicrobial stewardship program leaders can make use of this or other stories about patients and healthcare providers’ experiences with AMR to help build understanding of prevention and control practices that can be adopted by providers and consumers.

A Story as Knowledge Translation on AMR

Despite Kim Neudorf’s background in healthcare and involvement with an AMR awareness campaign, the story’s author felt she had little knowledge and few resources to draw from when her mother returned from hospital colonized with vancomycin resistant enterococcus (VRE). The experience raised many questions for Kim as she supported her mother, an elderly woman living with mixed dementia in a congregate setting. Why had her mother been at risk and how might she have acquired the drug-resistant bacteria? And now, how should she manage to help prevent its spread to other vulnerable people living in her retirement home and community? The story is a relatable patient journey through the eyes of a caregiver, with suggestions on what patients can do to self- advocate and partner with healthcare providers to slow the emergence and control the spread of AMR.