Table 2 Perception about antibiotic use and antibiotic stewardship: themes, subthemes, categories and exemplar quotations

Familiarity with terms

Empirical therapy was perceived as rational use

R2: Proper use or rational use here is, if we suspect infection we start antibiotic even if we are not sure the infection is bacterial or viral. It is a tertiary care hospital so some time we do perform microbiology tests but not commonly. We suspect we prescribe the antibiotic which can work for everything.

R11: Basically our hospital is teaching hospital we give antibiotic on proper time and with proper dose. We never give antibiotic without its need. Sometimes we do when have to give it prophylactically; patient is admitted and has exposure with infections. Here antibiotics are used rationally.

Irrational use of antibiotics

R13: We give medicine on patient demand it happens. We don’t go for cultures and blindly give triple therapy or a broad spectrum antibiotic.

Only few were familiar with the term “antibiotic stewardship”

Majority were not familiar with the term “antibiotic time-out”

R3: It is multidisciplinary programme, consist first starting from of physicians, pathologist/microbiologist and pharmacologist. They work together on incidence and prevalence of infection and on the basis of it form an antibiogram and then proper empirical treatment is decided and proper use of antibiotics takes place.

R4: I don’t know anything about that programme. And that kind of system is not practiced here.

R15: I don’t know.it is very difficult word? What does it mean? And nothing like this is practiced here or known about.