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Background: Perceived patient demand for antibiotics drives unnecessary antibiotic prescribing in outpatient settings, but little is known about how clinicians experience this demand or how this perceived demand shapes their decision-making.Objective: To identify how clinicians perceive patient demand for antibiotics and the way these perceptions stimulate unnecessary prescribing.Methods: Qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with clinicians in outpatient settings who prescribe antibiotics. Interviews were analyzed using conventional and directed content analysis.Results: Interviews were conducted with 25 clinicians from nine practices across three states. Patient demand was the most common reason respondents provided for why they prescribed non-indicated antibiotics. Three related factors motivated clinically unnecessary antibiotic use in the face of perceived patient demand: (i) clinicians want their patients to regard clinical visits as valuable and believe that an antibiotic prescription demonstrates value; (ii) clinicians want to avoid negative repercussions of denying antibiotics, including reduced income, damage to their reputation, emotional exhaustion, and degraded relationships with patients; (iii) clinicians believed that certain patients are impossible to satisfy without an antibiotic prescription and felt that efforts to refuse antibiotics to such patients wastes time and invites the aforementioned negative repercussions. Clinicians in urgent care settings were especially likely to describe being motivated by these factors.Conclusion: Interventions to improve antibiotic use in the outpatient setting must address clinicians' concerns about providing value for their patients, fear of negative repercussions from denying antibiotics, and the approach to inconvincible patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The AHRQ Safety Program for Improving Antibiotic Use aims to improve antibiotic (abx) use in acute, long-term, and outpatient care settings by enhancing abx stewardship programs (ASP) and engaging frontline providers to incorporate stewardship into daily abx decision-making, with an emphasis on viewing appropriate prescribing as a patient safety issue. We report on the impact of implementation of the Acute Care Safety Program on abx use and Clostridioides difficile in a cohort of US hospitals. Methods The Acute Care Safety Program was implemented from December 2017 to November 2018. At least one unit from each hospital participated. The Safety Program trained local ASP leaders and assisted ASPs and frontline staff to: (a) address attitudes and culture that pose challenges to judicious abx use and (b) incorporate best practices for the management of common infections into daily practice using the Four Moments of Antibiotic Decision Making framework (Figure 1). Education occurred via 17 live Webinars and an online toolkit that included recorded Webinars, narrated presentations, and other tools to assist with the development and dissemination of syndrome-specific local guidelines (Table 1). Units submitted days of abx therapy (DOT) per 1,000 patient-days (PD), C. difficile LabID events per 10,000 PD, and 10 review forms per month documenting structured discussions between the ASP and frontline staff about patients on abx. Linear and generalized linear mixed-effects models were employed to calculate pre-post intervention changes in abx use and C. difficile LabID events, respectively. Results 402 hospitals completed the Safety Program, including 28 (7%) academic medical centers (AMC), 289 (72%) community hospitals, and 85 (21%) critical access hospitals. 476 participating units consisted of 165 (35%) ICUs, 300 (63%) medical-surgical floors, and 11 (2%) other units. Both abx use and C. difficile LabID events decreased when comparing pre-post data (−41 DOT per 1,000 PD, [from 886.56, Figure 2], P = 0.001 and −1.2 LabID events per 10,000 PD [from 6.3], P = 0.027), respectively. Conclusion By targeting both improving abx prescribing culture and knowledge of best practices, the AHRQ Safety Program led to reductions in abx use across a diverse cohort of hospitals. Disclosures Sara E. Cosgrove, MD, MS, Basilea: Consultant; Theravance: Consultant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]