U.S. flag

An official website of the Department of Health and Human Services

SHARE:

linkedInFacebookXEmail AHRQPrintShare

Antibiotic Stewardship Toolkits

AHRQ's antibiotic stewardship toolkits were developed based on the experiences of clinical teams that joined the AHRQ Safety Program for Improving Antibiotic Use. Participating hospitals, long-term care facilities, and ambulatory practices successfully applied the Four Moments of Antibiotic Decision Making rubric to improve antibiotic use.

Setting-specific materials focus on improving antibiotic stewardship programs, engaging staff in improving prescribing behavior, and diagnosing and treating common infectious syndromes. Learn more about the project below.

Toolkits To Improve Antibiotic Use

Select your clinical setting below:

Access the Toolkit To Improve Antibiotic Use in Acute Care Hospitals. The toolkit includes information for the acute care setting on building and maintaining an antibiotic stewardship program, improving the safety culture around antibiotic prescribing, and diagnosing and treating common infectious disease syndromes.

Access the Toolkit to Improve Antibiotic Use in Long-Term Care. The toolkit includes information for the long-term care setting on building and maintaining an antibiotic stewardship program; improving the safety culture around antibiotic prescribing; improving communication between health care practitioners, residents, and their caregivers; and diagnosing, treating, and managing common infectious disease syndromes.

Access the Toolkit To Improve Antibiotic Use in Ambulatory Care. The toolkit includes information for the ambulatory care setting on developing and improving antibiotic stewardship activities in your practice, learning strategies for communicating about antibiotic prescribing, and learning best practices for diagnosing and managing common infectious syndromes and antibiotic allergies.

Access the Toolkit to Improve Antibiotic Use in Telemedicine Care. The toolkit includes information to improve safety culture around antibiotic prescribing in telemedicine settings. It provides information on how to diagnose and manage common infectious syndromes over telemedicine and improve communication with patients and families. .

About This Project

Antibiotics can be life-saving drugs. However, using antibiotics inappropriately can lead to avoidable antibiotic-associated adverse events such as rashes, diarrhea, and serious allergic reactions. Inappropriate antibiotic use can also contribute to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that make future infections more difficult to treat. The AHRQ Safety Program for Improving Antibiotic Use helped clinicians in hospitals, clinics, and long-term care apply the Four Moments of Antibiotic Decision Making to improve antibiotic stewardship. The AHRQ Safety Program for Telemedicine helped clinicians in video-based telemedicine settings apply the Four Moments of Antibiotic Decision Making in Telemedicine to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing and enhance antibiotic stewardship.

Tools, resources, and lessons learned by the facilities that participated in these projects were compiled into the four toolkits above, allowing other facilities to improve antibiotic stewardship.

Project Partners

This project was conducted through a partnership that brought together subject matter experts and providers in the field.

Partners for this project included—

  • Johns Hopkins Medicine.
  • NORC at the University of Chicago.

Project Report—Overall Summary

 

Page last reviewed October 2026
Page originally created November 2019

Internet Citation: Antibiotic Stewardship Toolkits. Content last reviewed October 2026. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD.
https://www.ahrq.gov/antibiotic-use/index.html

Click to copy citation