After the synthesis of the penicillium, medicine has never been the same. Scientists found an effective way to fight various bacterial diseases and saved millions of lives. However, the extended usage of antibiotics led to another severe issue, antibiotic resistance of bacteria. Self-prescriptions, undertreatment, and relaxed usage of wide-spectrum antibiotics were some of the reasons leading to the problem. Antibiotic stewardship programs (ASP) are aiming to optimize the prescription of these drugs through evidence-based quality improvement strategies.
The current analysis will evaluate the ASP, its elements, and profits. The core aspects of the program are the rational use of antibiotics to treat infections, protection of patients from harms caused by unnecessary intake of antimicrobial drugs, and the fight against antibiotic resistance (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021). The outcome measures are defined as a daily dose (DDD) per 1000 patient-days which represents how long the patient used the antibiotic, DDD per admission, days of therapy (DOTs) per 1000 patient-days, assessing patient and microbiology outcomes (World Health Organization, 2019). It is hard to estimate the number of people involved in the program but according to CDC (2021), at least 35,000 people die annually from antibiotic resistance in the U.S. With the help of the program, a substantial number of patients improves their treatment outcomes (CDC, 2021).
The program was assessed in 2019, 5 years after its realization by NHSN Annual Hospital Survey (CDC, 2021). Stewardship programs monitored unintended consequences which were preauthorization and treatment delays (CDC, 2021). Stakeholders in ASP are pharmacists, doctors, nurses, and other medical workers, patients, their relatives, pharmaceutical companies, and policymakers. The most profit from the results and reporting of the program the patients and medical staff will gain because the treatment process will become simpler and more reliable. Patients will not meet several antibiotics prescriptions, and doctors can successfully treat patients with standard periods of therapy.
The program meets the original intent as it develops patients’ education, prevents them from harming themselves from uncontrolled treatments, and prevents bacteria to conform and escape from antibiotics’ action. I would recommend implementing this program in my place of work because it is a strategy of up-to-date medicine and leads to proper strategies in curing diseases of bacterial genesis. After one year of implementation, as a nurse advocate, I could evaluate the program by gathering data from the patients regarding their period of antibiotic intake or calculating the DDD per 1000 patient-days.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021). Core elements of hospital Antibiotic Stewardship Programs. Web.
World Health Organization. (2019). Antimicrobial Stewardship Programmes in health-care facilities in low- and middle-income countries. A WHO practical toolkit. Web.