Antibiotic Stewardship Program: A Process Improvement in Long-Term Care

The purpose of the antibiotic stewardship program is exploring the question: does the implementation of an evidence-based practice antibiotic stewardship program versus current practice of improper adherence of collection of cultures prior to antibiotic prescribing, improve the adherence of specimen collection for culture prior to antibiotic prescribing in the long-term care unit. The lack of specimen collection of culture prior to antibiotic prescribing and the lack of monitoring of antibiotics prescribed to patients has resulted in the increased antibiotic resistance infections. Patients are prescribed antibiotics without appropriate collection of data to identify bacterial infections. The implementation of the antibiotic stewardship will increase the monitoring of patients’ outcomes by optimizing the selection of antibiotics, dosing and duration of antibiotics prescribed on patients, minimize collateral damage on patients, and reducing the emergence of antibiotic resistance infections. The intended results for the project is improved specimen collection prior to antibiotic prescribing and optimizing the use of antibiotics prescribed on patients. With this outcome, it will minimize financial burden on the facility with cost-effective ways of optimized antibiotic use, and minimized admission rate of patients to the hospital. Implementing the antibiotic stewardship is the key to its success. Implementation of the antibiotic stewardship will increase successful wins for the facility to improve patient outcomes. The continuous utilization of the antibiotic stewardship and its success will increase credibility of the stewardship program, thus resulting in optimizing antibiotic usage, delivering best practice care for patients, and sustainability of the program.