Antimicrobial stewardship on the dairy: Evaluating an on-farm framework for training farmworkers

Dairy farmworkers are commonly responsible for disease diagnosis and routine treatment decisions for cattle. This highlights the importance of farmwork-ers' knowledge and skills to successfully implement judicious use of antimicrobials in livestock production systems. The main objectives of this project were to develop and evaluate an on-farm educational program for farmworkers in antimicrobial stewardship in adult dairy cattle. A longitudinal quasi-experimental study design was used, by enrolling 12 conventional dairy farms in the United States (6 in California and 6 in Ohio). Farmworkers responsible for treatment decisions on the farm (n = 25) participated in a didactic and hands-on 12-wk antimicrobial stewardship training pro-gram led by the investigators. All antimicrobial stew-ardship training materials were available in Spanish and English. Interactive short videos with audio were developed to cover the learning objectives for each of the 6 teaching modules: antimicrobial resistance, treat-ment protocols, visual identification of sick animals, clinical mastitis, puerperal metritis, and lameness. Pre -and post-training assessments were administered using an online training assessment tool to evaluate changes in knowledge and attitudes about antimicrobial stew-ardship practices. Cluster analysis and multiple corre-spondence analyses were conducted to evaluate the as-sociation among categorical variables for participants' level of change in knowledge and its association with language, farm size, and state. A 32% average increase in knowledge was observed through an assessment con-ducted after completing the antimicrobial stewardship training, compared with the pre-training assessment. A significant improvement in 7 of 13 attitude questions related to antimicrobial stewardship practices on the farm was observed. Knowledge and attitude scores of participants on antimicrobial stewardship and iden-tification of sick animals significantly improved after completing the antimicrobial stewardship training. The results observed in this study support the relevance of antimicrobial stewardship training programs targeting farmworkers to improve antimicrobial drug use knowl-edge and skills.

Automated summary

This study developed and evaluated an on-farm educational program for dairy farmworkers to improve their knowledge and skills in antimicrobial stewardship for adult cattle. The results showed significant improvement in knowledge and attitudes after completing the training.