Develop and Improve Antibiotic Stewardship Activities in Telemedicine Practices To Improve Patient Safety

For information on how these materials can be integrated into your practice’s efforts to improve antibiotic use, read the Implementation Guide for Improving Antibiotic Use in Telemedicine (PDF, 380 KB) 

Development of an infrastructure to promote antibiotic stewardship is necessary to optimize antibiotic prescribing in telemedicine care. The presentations and the tools below can help you implement antibiotic stewardship activities from scratch or improve the effectiveness of your existing stewardship work. Telemedicine practice managers and practice leadership should review this content. If your practice has an antibiotic stewardship team, the team should review the content as well.

Presentations

Each presentation has slides and a facilitator guide. The presentations titled "Why Should Your Practice Focus on Improving Antibiotic Prescribing?", "Antibiotics and What they Treat," and "Antibiotic Allergies" can be used as formal presentations given to the entire practice, while the presentation titled "Sustaining Antibiotic Stewardship Efforts" is more pertinent for practice leadership and team members responsible for stewardship.

Tools

These tools can help you implement or improve antibiotic stewardship in your telemedicine practice.

• The Implementation Guide for Improving Antibiotic Use in Telemedicine provides information on how to use the Safety Program materials to develop robust antibiotic stewardship activities in your practice.
• The Gap Analysis Tool 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 can be signed by clinicians and staff, or include a picture of clinicians and staff, and be shared virtually (e.g., as a screensaver, as a virtual background, in a virtual waiting room) to let your patients know that your practice is committed to improving the antibiotic care they receive.
• The Antibiotic Prescribing Data Collection Tool provides guidance on how to collect antibiotic prescribing data.
• The Sustaining Antibiotic Stewardship Tools can help you continue your antibiotic stewardship activities over time.