Antibiotic Stewardship: Updates and Opportunities to Reduce HAIs

In this session, Josh Ohrtman, PharmD, will discuss antibiotic stewardship and the CDC’s core elements and explain why appropriate use of antibiotics is important. Ohrtman will also outline barriers to antibiotic stewardship and provide resources and opportunities for reducing healthcare-associated infections (HAIs).

Antibiotic resistance happens when microbes (germs) develop ways to survive the use of medicines meant to kill or weaken them. When bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics, it is much harder to treat infections that the bacteria cause. Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem in the U.S., and the main cause of this problem is the misuse of antibiotics.

Antibiotic stewardship is the effort to measure and improve how antibiotics are prescribed by clinicians and used by patients. Improving antibiotic prescribing and use is critical to effectively treat infections, protect patients from harms caused by unnecessary antibiotic use, and combat antibiotic resistance.

CDC estimates that more than 2 million people are sickened every year in the U.S. with antibiotic-resistant infections, with at least 23,000 dying as a result. In addition, antibiotics can kill the healthy bacteria in the gut, allowing more harmful bacteria, such as Clostridium difficile, to grow in its place.

Because antibiotic-resistance has become a problem in both clinical and community settings, it’s important that public health departments, healthcare providers and the larger community work together to improve antibiotic use.

Speaker: Josh Ohrtman, PharmD | Medicine Shoppe; Rapid City, SD