Pediatrician Brian O’Sullivan commented for MedPageToday.com on a study that combined an educational intervention with regular feedback to pediatricians in an attempt to reduce inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics to children treated for respiratory infections in an outpatient setting. The study, Effect of an outpatient antimicrobial stewardship intervention on broad-spectrum antibiotic prescribing by primary care pediatricians: a randomized trial was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
A pediatric lung disease expert, Dr. O’Sullivan said that while other similar studies have been conducted before, this study did a better job of looking at the sustainability of the intervention over time. He was not involved in the study.
“By giving feedback to physicians about what their prescribing practices were [the researchers] were able to see not only that improvement in prescribing practices [was] sustained but actually improved a bit as the year went on because the physicians did get quarterly feedback about what their prescribing practices were,” O’Sullivan said.
See the full story here: Program Cuts Use of Antibiotics in Kids
