DASON’s primary goals are threefold: 1) to improve quality of patient care, 2) to enhance patient safety, and 3) to promote judicious antimicrobial use for patients treated in community hospitals
DASON Operations Director and Liaison Pharmacist, Dr. Libby Dodds Ashley, worked with a team from Rochester NY to reduce fluoroquinolone use and C. difficile infections in community nursing homes through hospital-nursing home collaboration. Nursing homes (NHs) are an important target for antibiotic stewardship (AS). We describe a collaborative model to reduce Clostridioides difficile infections (CDIs) in NHs through optimization of antibiotic use including a reduction in high-risk antibiotics such as fluoroquinolones.
DASON faculty Dr. Rebekah Moehring, along with DASON clinical pharmacists Drs. April Dyer and Libby Dodds Ashley, provided commentary on an article by Feller et al "Post-discharge oral antimicrobial use among hospitalized patients across an integrated national healthcare network." The DASON team's commentary, "Total duration instead of in-hospital antibiotic days: reaching beyond the hospital walls," touches on many aspects of hospital antimicrobial stewardship practices, and includes a helpful table of Do's and Don'ts of antibiotic order documentation.
This month, DASON member hospital UNC Rockingham Health Care received recognition from the NC SHARPPS program as an Advanced Partner. There are now a total of seven DASON member hospitals in the STAR Partners program. All three hospitals who have acheieved Champion status with the STAR Partners are DASON Member hospitals.
You can check out the full list of STAR Partner hospitals, as well as learn a little more about the program, here.
DCASIP and DASON fellow, Mike Yarrington, worked with the DASON faculty and staff to analyze antibiotic use data from 29 southeastern US hospitals over a 5-year period to determine changes in antibiotic use after the fluoroquinolone US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory update in 2016. Fluoroquinolone use declined both before and after the FDA announcement, and the use of select, alternative antibiotics increased after the announcement.
The impact of an effective antimicrobial stewardship on patient safety, better patient outcomes, hospital costs, and reducing antimicrobial resistance are enormous.
The resources and support we have received from DASON have allowed us to move projects forward in our antimicrobial stewardship efforts much more quickly and effectively than we could ever have done on our own.
