Reduction of unnecessary antibiotic days in a level IV neonatal intensive care unit.

Objective: Antibiotics are widely prescribed in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and duration of prescription is varied. We sought to decrease unnecessary antibiotic days for the most common indications in our outborn level IV NICU by 20% within 1 year.

Design And Interventions: A retrospective chart review was completed to determine the most common indications and treatment duration for antibiotic therapy in our 39-bed level IV NICU.