Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: Objectives
To determine whether face-to-face prompting of critical care physicians reduces empirical antibiotic utilization compared to an unprompted electronic checklist embedded within the electronic health record.Design
Random allocation design.Setting
Medical ICU with high-intensity intensivist coverage at a tertiary care urban medical center.Patients
Two hundred ninety-six critically ill patients treated with at least 1 day of empirical antibiotics.Interventions
For one medical ICU team, face-to-face prompting of critical care physicians if they did not address empirical antibiotic utilization during a patient's daily rounds. On a separate medical ICU team, attendings and fellows were trained once to complete an electronic health record-embedded checklist daily for each patient, including a question asking whether listed empirical antibiotics could be discontinued.Measurements and main results
Prompting led to a more than four-fold increase in discontinuing or narrowing of empirical antibiotics compared to use of the electronic checklist. Prompted group patients had a lower proportion of patient-days on which empirical antibiotics were administered compared to electronic checklist group patients (63.1% vs 70.0%, p = 0.002). Mean proportion of antibiotic-days on which empirical antibiotics were used was also lower in the prompted group, although not statistically significant (0.78 [0.27] vs 0.83 [0.27], p = 0.093). Each additional day of empirical antibiotics predicted higher risk-adjusted mortality (odds ratio, 1.14; 95% CI, 1.05-1.23). Risk-adjusted ICU length of stay and hospital mortality were not significantly different between the two groups.Conclusions
Face-to-face prompting was superior to an unprompted electronic health record-based checklist at reducing empirical antibiotic utilization. Sustained culture change may have contributed to the electronic checklist having similar empirical antibiotic utilization to a prompted group in the same medical ICU 2 years prior. Future studies should investigate the integration of an automated prompting mechanism with a more generalizable electronic health record-based checklist.
SUBMITTER: Weiss CH
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3812385 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Nov
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Weiss Curtis H CH Dibardino David D Rho Jason J Sung Nina N Collander Brett B Wunderink Richard G RG
Critical care medicine 20131101 11
<h4>Objectives</h4>To determine whether face-to-face prompting of critical care physicians reduces empirical antibiotic utilization compared to an unprompted electronic checklist embedded within the electronic health record.<h4>Design</h4>Random allocation design.<h4>Setting</h4>Medical ICU with high-intensity intensivist coverage at a tertiary care urban medical center.<h4>Patients</h4>Two hundred ninety-six critically ill patients treated with at least 1 day of empirical antibiotics.<h4>Interv ...[more]