Swine veterinarians have been focused on judicial use of antimicrobials for decades, but judicious use is just one facet of antimicrobial stewardship. Most facets of human medicine now have formal antimicrobial stewardship plans that are required for funding. Given that veterinary medicine is paid entirely by the animal owner, funding mechanisms as an enticement will not drive adoption which leaves regulation to require stewardship plans in the future more likely.

When you compare swine medicine with the traditional 5 core principles of stewardship it is clear that swine veterinarians and animal caretakers already do many things that improve antimicrobial stewardship. As the general public's interest in our animal health and welfare practices increases, a formal stewardship plan is a way to illustrate that we are actually leading other disciplines in preserving antimicrobials for future use.

What you will find within this course are 5 modules that take you from the background of antimicrobial resistance, through the general concepts of stewardship, to a very specific template that you can apply to formulate (or compile current practices) into a formal plan that can be used to drive stewardship internally and describe your stewardship publicly. The plans can coalesce around any size farm, level of production, veterinary practice or corporate organizational level. In other words, a plan can be built at any level that is useful to managing the animals and antimicrobials used to preserve their health.

The course is taught entirely by distance learning using modules prepared by the faculty and staff of the Swine Medicine Education Center at Iowa State University.