Antibiotics are go!

Quality Improvement Poster Download

Background & Problem

Sepsis mortality increases with antibiotic delay. Early appropriate antibiotics are the key to improved sepsis outcomes.

Aim

Ensure 80% of first dose antibiotics are given within 60 minutes of prescription on ACUC by March 2016.

Method

• Baseline data taken from FAB60/ HAPPI audit 2015.
• 2 primary data collectors.
• Cycle 1 and Cycle 2 each audited over 1 week with daily data collection of all patients on ACUC.
• Type of antibiotic and time difference from prescription to administration recorded.
• Data analysed using Excel and Run diagram developed.
• Additional data collected re ‘Red Flag’ sepsis on final data collection.

Results

From post intervention data 89.1% of stat antibiotic doses had a documented time prescribed. This is compared to 63.9% of antibiotics in the baseline data. 97.6% of antibiotics were administrated within 43 minutes of prescription.

Conclusions/ Learning points:

• 97.6% of patients on ACUC received antibiotics within 60 minutes
• Type of antibiotic no affect on time
• Limited room for further improvement
• Need to focus on identification of sepsis
• Importance of stakeholders

Implications/Next Steps

• Re focus the aim
• Emergency department and Red flag sepsis
  • Preliminary data: 9/24 February data had red flag sepsis, 3/9 given antibiotics within 1hr of arrival.
  • Triage nurses
• Ward setting.