scholarly journals The Impact of a Pediatric Antibiotic Standard Dosing Table on Dosing Errors

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 220-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammed A. Aseeri

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to compare the rate of dosing errors for antibiotic orders in pediatric patients before and after the implementation of an antibiotic standard dosing table with precalculated dosage for different weight ranges at a tertiary care hospital. METHODS A retrospective study of 300 antibiotic prescriptions for pediatric patients in three different settings (ambulatory care, inpatient, and emergency department) at a tertiary care hospital assessed the appropriateness of antibiotic dosing. The need for an antibiotic dosing standardization policy was identified after finding that more than 30% of patients experienced a dose variation of ±10% of the recommended daily dose. An antibiotic dosing standardization policy was implemented with an antibiotic standard dosing table for different weight ranges, and a hospital wide-education program was conducted to increase awareness of this new practice and its benefits. Three months after implementation, a random sampling of 300 antibiotic prescriptions collected from the same settings as the pre-intervention period was evaluated for compliance with the new policy and its effect on the number of antibiotic dosing errors. RESULTS Six hundred prescriptions were included in this study (300 in the pre-implementation phase and 300 in the post-implementation phase). Patient characteristics were similar in both groups in terms of sex, age, and weight. Physician compliance with the antibiotic dosing standardization policy after its implementation was 62%. The dosing standardization policy reduced the rate of dosing errors from 34.3% to 5.06% (p=0.0001), and weight documentation on the antibiotic prescription improved from 65.8% to 85.7% (p=0.0001). CONCLUSIONS Implementation of an antibiotic dosing standardization policy significantly reduced the incidence of dosing errors in antibiotics prescribed for pediatric patients in our hospital.

Author(s):  
Amy Nolen ◽  
Rawaa Olwi ◽  
Selby Debbie

Background: Patients approaching end of life may experience intractable symptoms managed with palliative sedation. The legalization of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in Canada in 2016 offers a new option for relief of intolerable suffering, and there is limited evidence examining how the use of palliative sedation has evolved with the introduction of MAiD. Objectives: To compare rates of palliative sedation at a tertiary care hospital before and after the legalization of MAiD. Methods: This study is a retrospective chart analysis of all deaths of patients followed by the palliative care consult team in acute care, or admitted to the palliative care unit. We compared the use of palliative sedation during 1-year periods before and after the legalization of MAiD, and screened charts for MAiD requests during the second time period. Results: 4.7% (n = 25) of patients who died in the palliative care unit pre-legalization of MAiD received palliative sedation compared to 14.6% (n = 82) post-MAiD, with no change in acute care. Post-MAiD, 4.1% of deaths were medically-assisted deaths in the palliative care unit (n = 23) and acute care (n = 14). For patients who requested MAiD but instead received palliative sedation, the primary reason was loss of decisional capacity to consent for MAiD. Conclusion: We believe that the mainstream presence of MAiD has resulted in an increased recognition of MAiD and palliative sedation as distinct entities, and rates of palliative sedation increased post-MAiD due to greater awareness about patient choice and increased comfort with end-of-life options.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S362-S363
Author(s):  
Gaurav Agnihotri ◽  
Alan E Gross ◽  
Minji Seok ◽  
Cheng Yu Yen ◽  
Farah Khan ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Although it is recommended that an OPAT program should be managed by a formal OPAT team that supports the treating physician, many OPAT programs face challenges in obtaining necessary program staff (i.e nurses or pharmacists) due to limited data examining the impact of a dedicated OPAT team on patient outcomes. Our objective was to compare OPAT-related readmission rates among patients receiving OPAT before and after the implementation of a strengthened OPAT program. Methods This retrospective quasi-experiment compared adult patients discharged on intravenous (IV) antibiotics from the University of Illinois Hospital before and after implementation of programmatic changes to strengthen the OPAT program. Data from our previous study were used as the pre-intervention group (1/1/2012 to 8/1/2013), where only individual infectious disease (ID) physicians coordinated OPAT. Post-intervention (10/1/2017 to 1/1/2019), a dedicated OPAT nurse provided full time support to the treating ID physicians through care coordination, utilization of protocols for lab monitoring and management, and enhanced documentation. Factors associated with readmission for OPAT-related problems at a significance level of p< 0.1 in univariate analysis were eligible for testing in a forward stepwise multinomial logistic regression to identify independent predictors of readmission. Results Demographics, antimicrobial indications, and OPAT administration location of the 428 patients pre- and post-intervention are listed in Table 1. After implementation of the strengthened OPAT program, the readmission rate due to OPAT-related complications decreased from 17.8% (13/73) to 6.5% (23/355) (p=0.001). OPAT-related readmission reasons included: infection recurrence/progression (56%), adverse drug reaction (28%), or line-associated issues (17%). Independent predictors of hospital readmission due to OPAT-related problems are listed in Table 2. Table 1. OPAT Patient Demographics and Factors Pre- and Post-intervention Table 2. Factors independently associated with hospital readmission in OPAT patients Conclusion An OPAT program with dedicated staff at a large academic tertiary care hospital was independently associated with decreased risk for readmission, which provides critical evidence to substantiate additional resources being dedicated to OPAT by health systems in the future. Disclosures All Authors: No reported disclosures


Author(s):  
Yan-Jun Zheng ◽  
Ting Xie ◽  
Lin Wu ◽  
Xiao-Ying Liu ◽  
Ling Zhu ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The incidence of Candida bloodstream infections (BSIs), has increased over time. In this study, we aimed to describe the current epidemiology of Candida BSI in a large tertiary care hospital in Shanghai and to determine the risk factors of 28-day mortality and the impact of antifungal therapy on clinical outcomes. Methods All consecutive adult inpatients with Candida BSI at Ruijin Hospital between January 1, 2008, and December 31, 2018, were enrolled. Underlying diseases, clinical severity, species distribution, antifungal therapy, and their impact on the outcomes were analyzed. Results Among the 370 inpatients with 393 consecutive episodes of Candida BSI, the incidence of nosocomial Candida BSI was 0.39 episodes/1000 hospitalized patients. Of the 393 cases, 299 (76.1%) were treated with antifungal therapy (247 and 52 were treated with early appropriate and targeted antifungal therapy, respectively). The overall 28-day mortality rate was 28.5%, which was significantly lower in those who received early appropriate (25.5%) or targeted (23.1%) antifungal therapy than in those who did not (39.4%; P = 0.012 and P = 0.046, respectively). In multivariate Cox regression analysis, age, chronic renal failure, mechanical ventilation, and severe neutropenia were found to be independent risk factors of the 28-day mortality rate. Patients who received antifungal therapy had a lower mortality risk than did those who did not. Conclusions The incidence of Candida BSI has increased steadily in the past 11 years at our tertiary care hospital in Shanghai. Antifungal therapy influenced short-term survival, but no significant difference in mortality was observed between patients who received early appropriate and targeted antifungal therapy.


Author(s):  
Qaiser Jahan ◽  
K. Pallavi ◽  
R. Hamshika ◽  
Varun Talla ◽  
Jupally Venkateshwar Rao ◽  
...  

Background: Improper drug usages expose patients to drug-related problems (DRPs) and can be the cause of patient morbidity and even mortality, especially frequent in hospitalized patients and pediatric groups. Objective: The objective of the present study was to identify and assess the drug-related problems in the pediatric department of tertiary care hospitals. Methods: The cross-sectional, observational study was carried out for six months included pediatric in-patients of age ≤15 years of either gender in pediatric units of tertiary care hospitals of India. The enrolled pediatric patients were observed for any drug-related problem that were further recorded and classified using the DRP registration format taken from Cipolle et al. The assessment of therapy was done by using positional statements from standard organizations and guidelines. Main outcome measure: Incidences of drug-related problems and their assessment and root cause analysis. Results: A total of 970 DRPs were identified in 296 patients, with an overall incidence of 49.3%. The incidence of DRPs was maximum in the age group of 2-12 years of children (51.2%). Patients who took six or more drugs were around eight (OR:8.41 , 95% CI: 5.22 to 13.55) times more likely to have DRPs compared to those patients who took less than six drugs. The incidences of DRPs were more in patients who were hospitalized for ≥ 7 days. Conclusion: The present study revealed significantly higher incidences of DRPs in hospitalized pediatric patients necessitating the involvement of clinical pharmacists in the pediatric department of tertiary care hospitals.


Author(s):  
OVAIS ULLAH SHIRAZI ◽  
NORNY SYAFINAZ AB RAHMAN ◽  
CHE SURAYA ZIN ◽  
HANNAH MD MAHIR ◽  
SYAMHANIN ADNAN

Objective: To evaluate the impact of antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) on antibiotic prescribing patterns and certain clinical outcomes, the length of stay (LOS) and the re-admission rate (RR) of the patients treated within the medical ward of a tertiary care hospital in Malaysia. Methods: This quasi-experimental study was conducted retrospectively. The prescriptions of the AMS included alert antibiotics (AA) such as cefepime, ceftazidime, colistin (polymyxin E), imipenem-cilastatin, meropenem, piperacillin-tazobactam and vancomycin were reviewed for the period of 24 mo before (May, 2012–April, 2014) and after (May, 2014–April, 2016) the AMS implementation for the patients who were treated within the medical ward of a Malaysian tertiary care hospital. Patterns of antibiotics prescribed were determined descriptively. The impact of the AMS on the length of stay (LOS) and readmission rate (RR) was determined by the interrupted time series (ITS) comparative analysis of the pre-and post-AMS segments segregated by the point of onset (May, 2014) of the AMS program. Data analysis was performed through autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) Winter Additive model and the Games-Howell non-parametric post hoc test by using IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 25.0 for Windows (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). Results: A total of 1716 prescriptions of the AA included for the AMS program showed that cefepime (623, 36.3%) and piperacillin-tazobactam (424, 24.7%) were the most prescribed antibiotics from May 2012 to April 2016. A 23.6% drop in the number of the AA prescriptions was observed during the 24-month post-AMS period. The LOS of the patients using any of the AA showed a post-AMS decline by 3.5 d. The patients’ LOS showed an average reduction of 0.12 (95% CI, 0.05–0.19, P=0.001) with the level and slope change of 0.18 (95% CI, 0.04–0.32, P=0.02) and 0.074 (95% CI, 0.02–0.12, P=0.002), respectively. Similarly, the percent RR reduced from 20.0 to 9.85 during the 24-month post-AMS period. The observed post-AMS mean monthly reduction of the RR for the patients using any AA was 0.38 (95% CI, 0.23–0.53, P<0.001) with the level and slope change of 0.33 (95% CI, 0.14–0.51, P=0.02) and 0.37 (95% CI, 0.16–0.58, P=0.001), respectively. Conclusion: The AMS program of a Malaysian tertiary care hospital was a coordinated set of interventions implemented by the AMS team of the hospital that comprised of the infectious diseases (ID) physician, clinical pharmacists and microbiologist. The successful implementation of the AMS program from May, 2014 to April, 2016 within the medical ward resulted in the drop of the number of AA prescriptions that sequentially resulted in the significant (P<0.05) post-AMS reduction of the LOS and the RR.


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