PPP 181 - ABC of Antibiotics

We're marking World Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Awareness Week 2025 with an episode dedicated entirely to antibiotics, the medicines we rely on every day and the ones we need to protect. We're joined by Caroline Chen, a senior antimicrobial stewardship pharmacist and project officer at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, for a deep dive into all things antibiotics. Together, we walk through the ABCs of commonly used antibiotics, or more accurately the B through T, including beta-lactams, clindamycin, doxycycline, macrolides, metronidazole, nitrofurantoin, quinolones, rifampicin and trimethoprim. This episode highlights how these medicines work and when we use them and key counselling points. Antibiotics are a finite resource, and understanding them is one of the most powerful tools we have to preserve their effectiveness for the future.