Dr. Irma Korinteli, paediatrician and assistant professor at Tbilisi State Medical University in Georgia, has taken part in the Global-PPS since 2015. Ten years and more than 1,000 point prevalence surveys later, she has helped turn that data into something Georgian hospitals can actually put to use: a nationally accredited training programme that is changing how physicians prescribe antibiotics.

Since 2015, participation in the Global-PPS has grown from a handful of Georgian hospitals to more than 30 institutions and over 1,000 evaluations, under the leadership of Professor Karaman Pagava of Tbilisi State Medical University. Year after year, the surveys tracked how antibiotics were actually being used, and the picture that emerged was quite alarming: broad-spectrum agents prescribed more often than necessary, clinical guidelines not always followed in practice, and too little targeted therapy once culture results came back.

These factual findings became the starting point for action. Dr. Korinteli and her colleagues used the survey results as the foundation for a 12-credit Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme for physicians, accredited by Georgia’s Ministry of Health and delivered under the academic leadership of Tbilisi State Medical University. Interestingly, the programme is built to help physicians see themselves in the data: their department, their prescribing habits, their share in a national pattern. Since its launch in 2024, six CPD sessions have reached almost 200 physicians, using data visualizations to make an abstract concept like antimicrobial resistance feel immediate and personal.

That shift, from abstract statistic to personal responsibility, is key. The Global-PPS data allow the teams to dig into questions that matter to a prescriber standing at a patient’s bedside: are broad-spectrum antibiotics mostly started as empirical therapy? Is that choice backed by a clear clinical indication? How closely does actual prescribing follow the guidelines that exist on paper? By looking at guideline practicality, variation between departments, and the everyday uncertainty clinicians face, the programme traces prescribing patterns back to their root causes.