Nearly 100 medical, nursing and pharmacy students and their faculty joined forces in Medical City last week to raise awareness about the rising threat of antibiotic resistance and how healthcare providers can work better together to fight it.
The gathering at UCF’s College of Medicine celebrated Antibiotic Awareness Week 2025, designed to inform patients and providers that the overuse and misuse of antibiotics can cause bacteria to mutate and become “super bugs” that are resistant to the drugs designed to kill them.
“In the United States, we know that 35,000 people die every year because of antibiotic resistant infections, and globally we have about 1 million people die every year,” said Dr. Taseen Desin, associate professor of microbiology at the UCF College of Medicine. “If we didn’t have super bugs or if we avoided the infections in the first place, we could save these people.”
Students from UCF’s colleges of Medicine and Nursing and University of Florida’s College of Pharmacy participated in spin-the-wheel questions about antibiotic use and signed a pledge promising to prescribe antibiotics responsibly, educate patients and promote infection-prevention practices.
“We all learn about the same topics from different approaches. But when we can get together at events like this, we can pool what we’ve learned together to try to address the root causes,” said Michael Pedicone, a first-year UCF medical student. “Even though we’re all students right now, 10 years from now when we’re practicing, we’ll all be working alongside each other in different roles, and making sure we all understand the issue helps address it.”
Organizers hope events like these will open a dialogue between fields of medicine on the need to ensure that patients are given antibiotics only when appropriate and medically necessary. That gives bacteria fewer opportunities to become resistant. Healthcare providers often face patients demanding antibiotics whenever they feel sick even though such prescriptions do nothing to fight viruses like the common cold.
Third-year UF pharmacy student Maha Tayour attended the event because of her strong belief in antimicrobial stewardship fostered through her pharmacy training.
Fellow pharmacy students Sarah Swetland and Guiselle Castrillo set up the spin-the-wheel competition to emphasize key points of proper antibiotic prescribing.
“As a team with nursing, doctors and pharmacists, it is important to work together to make sure the patient is safe.” said Castrillo.
While the students pledged to work together to improve antibiotic stewardship, Dr. Desin says we call can lend a hand in fighting antibiotic resistance.
“All of us have our role to play. If we avoid getting infections by getting our vaccines early, washing our hands and protecting ourselves, we won’t need to use antibiotics,’’ he said