Education and Communication in an Interprofessional Antimicrobial Stewardship Program.

Context: Interprofessional education/interprofessional practice (IPE/IPP) is an essential component in medical education and training. A collaborative interprofessional team environment ensures optimal patient-centered care.

Objective: To describe the implementation of 2 interprofessional antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP) teams using IPE/IPP and to assess the acceptance rate by the primary medical and surgical teams of ASP recommendations for antimicrobial interventions.

Methods: A business plan for the ASP was approved at 2 academic medical centers used for the present study. During a 3-year study period, 2 interprofessional ASP teams included an attending physician specializing in infectious disease (ID), an ID physician fellow, an ASP pharmacist, physician residents, medical students, pharmacy residents, and pharmacy students. Educational seminars were presented for all adult-admitting physicians to discuss the need for the ASP and the prospective audit and feedback process. Cases were presented for discussion during ASP/ID rounds and recommendations were agreed upon by the ASP team. A motivational interviewing face-to-face technique was frequently used to convey the ASP team recommendation to the primary medical or surgical team in a noncoercive and educational manner. The ASP team recommendations for ASP interventions were documented in the medical records.

Results: The overall acceptance rate of recommendations by the primary medical and surgical teams were greater than 90% (2051 of 2266). The most frequent interventions provided were streamline therapy (601), route of administration change (452), bug-drug mismatch (190), and discontinuation of therapy (179). Route of administration change was also the most frequently accepted intervention (96%).

Conclusions: The motivational face-to-face communication technique was particularly useful in conveying ASP team member recommendations to the primary medical or surgical teams. Communicating recommendations as a multidisciplinary team in an educational manner seems to have resulted in to greater acceptance of recommendations.