Antimicrobial Stewardship in Long-Term Care Facilities: A Call to Action

Antimicrobial stewardship in long-term care facilities.

Although antimicrobial stewardship has been shown to improve microbiologic susceptibility patterns, decrease drug toxicities, and lower overall drug costs in the inpatient setting, there are few studies assessing programs in the long-term care (LTC) setting. Implementing antimicrobial stewardship programs in LTC settings can be challenging as the LTC setting houses a unique population of frail ...

Participatory action research in antimicrobial stewardship: a novel approach to improving antimicrobial prescribing in hospitals and long-term care facilities.

It is challenging to change physicians' antimicrobial prescribing behaviour. Although antimicrobial prescribing is determined by contextual (e.g. a lack of guidelines), cultural (e.g. peer practice) and behavioural (e.g. perceived decision making autonomy) factors, most antimicrobial stewardship programmes fail to consider these factors in their approach. This may lead to suboptimal interventio...

Antimicrobial resistance in long-term-care facilities.

During the last quarter century, numerous reports have indicated that antimicrobial resistance commonly is encountered in long-term-care facilities (LTCFs). Gram-negative uropathogens resistant to penicillin, cephalosporin, aminoglycoside, or fluoroquinolone antibiotics and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus have received the greatest attention, but other reports have described the occ...

Antimicrobial use in long-term-care facilities.

There is intense antimicrobial use in long-term-care facilities (LTCF), and studies repeatedly document that much of this use is inappropriate. The current crisis in antimicrobial resistance, which encompasses the LTCF, heightens concerns of antimicrobial use. Attempts to improve antimicrobial use in the LTCF are complicated by characteristics of the patient population, limited availability of ...

Frequently Identified Gaps in Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs in Long-Term Care Facilities