Reducing Antibiotic Use in a Level III and Two Level II Neonatal Intensive Care Units Targeting Prescribing Practices for Both Early and Late-onset Sepsis: A Quality Improvement Project.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Variation in antibiotic (ATB) use exists between neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) without demonstrated benefit to outcomes tested. Studies show that early-onset sepsis occurs in up to 2% of NICU patients, yet antibiotics (ABX) were started in over 50% of neonates admitted to our NICUs. An internal audit identified variations in prescribing practices and excessive use of ABX. As a result, we introduced ATB stewardship to our NICUs in 2015 to reduce unnecessary usage of these medications.

Methods

We used standard quality improvement methodology utilizing multiple iterative plan-do-study-act cycles during a 6-year project to test various interventions aimed at using ABX wisely. Specifically, our goals were to reduce ABX on admission (AA), percent of patients w

SUBMITTER: Kahn DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9197376 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May-Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature