Develop and Improve Antibiotic Stewardship Activities in Your Practice

For information on how the materials below can be integrated into your practice’s efforts to improve antibiotic use, read the Implementation Guide for Ambulatory Care Antibiotic Stewardship (PDF, 708 KB) 

The four presentations and the six tools below can help you implement antibiotic stewardship activities from scratch or improve the effectiveness of your existing stewardship work. The Antibiotic Stewardship Team, as well as practice managers and practice leadership, should review this content.

Presentations

Each presentation below has slides and a facilitator guide. The presentations titled “Why Should Your Practice Focus on Improving Antibiotic Prescribing” and “Improving Communication Between Members of the Practice Around Antibiotic Decisions” can be used as formal presentations to be given to the entire practice, while those titled “Implementing Antibiotic Stewardship in Your Practice” and “Sustaining Antibiotic Stewardship Efforts” are more pertinent for the Antibiotic Stewardship Team and practice leadership.

Tools

The Implementation Guide for Ambulatory Care Antibiotic Stewardship and the Timeline for Implementing Antibiotic Stewardship in Ambulatory Care provide information on how to use the Toolkit materials to develop robust antibiotic stewardship activities in your practice. The Gap Analysis Tool for Antibiotic Stewardship in Ambulatory Care can help you identify where you are in the process of setting up antibiotic stewardship activities, and can be used to track progress over time. The Commitment Poster (in both English and Spanish) can be signed by clinicians and staff, or include a picture of clinicians and staff, and posted to let your patients know that your clinic is committed to improving the antibiotic care they receive. Accessing and Reporting Antibiotic Prescription Data details how to obtain antibiotic prescribing data from the electronic health record and calculate antibiotic prescription rates to be used for tracking progress and providing feedback to the practice and individual prescribing clinicians.