Identification of Intervention Opportunities through Assessment of the Appropriateness of Antibiotic Prescribing in Surgical Patients in a UK Hospital Using a National Audit Tool: A Single Centre Retrospective Audit.

Identifying opportunities to safely reduce antibiotic prescribing is necessary for prescribers and antibiotic stewardship teams to minimise unwarranted antibiotic use. We aimed to quantify excess antibiotic use in General Surgery. We retrospectively audited the antibiotic prescribing for patients discharged from the General Surgery specialty in an acute hospital in the south-west of England for one month using an audit tool developed by Public Health England.