Promoting medical student engagement with antimicrobial stewardship through involvement in undergraduate research.

We agree with the recent report in this Journal from Nand and colleagues that education is a key factor in curbing antimicrobial resistance (AMR). AMR is a leading patient health and safety issue that requires engagement at all levels of society. Although there is commitment from clinicians practicing infection-related specialties towards research in AMR and antimicrobial stewardship (AMS), there is a wide variation in the level of crossspecialty engagement with AMS-AMR research at UK and international state-of-the-art conferences, with many specialties who are responsible for high rates of antimicrobial usage and AMR engaging very little with AMS-AMR research output. This lack of engagement with AMS-AMR is not only observed at the level of conferences, with a heterogeneous level of importance also attributed amongst undergraduate and postgraduate training pathways across clinical medicine. It therefore seems apparent that the AMS-AMR agenda needs to be promoted from within specialties, rather than being ‘pushed’ on them as an external agenda, to promote broad ownership and capacity within all clinical specialties that use antimicrobials. Furthermore, this must start early e including during undergraduate medical training. How this engagement with clinicians in training should be achieved however, is less clear. The National Health Service recognises the importance of research, teaching, and training to the future success of the organisation. This is supported by the General Medial Council (GMC) in their outline paper, Tomorrow’s Doctors. Medical students are expected to qualify with the necessary clinical, professional, and academic skills. Whilst undergraduate curricula are now adapting to support students in achieving these goals, the majority of undergraduate student research and teaching experience is developed in the extra-curricular setting. This poses several challenges for both the student and supporting organisations and means that uptake can often be varied. With a need for new and enticing methods for engaging a wide range of undergraduates in AMS-AMR, we investigated whether the use of an