Dysphagia after Stroke: An Unmet Antibiotic Stewardship Opportunity.

The goal of antibiotic stewardship is to improve antibiotic use, often by reducing unnecessary treatment. Bedside dysphagia screening tools help identify patients at high risk of aspiration following stroke. Presence of dysphagia does not indicate a need for antibiotic treatment.

Use of the vital sign stamp as a systematic screening tool to promote smoking cessation.

Objectives: To examine the ability of a simple system-wide screening assessment tool, an expanded vital sign stamp, to increase rates of smoker identification, physician advice to quit smoking, and physician assistance in quitting and abstinence rates.

Participants And Methods: This study is a pretest, posttest design in which 5 primary health care clinics were randomly assigned to either the intervention condition, which received the vital sign stamp, or the control condition. Participants (N = 9439) were surveyed by using exit interviews at the 5 clinics, both before and after the vital sign intervention was implemented.