ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Med.
Sec. Infectious Diseases: Pathogenesis and Therapy
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1583134
This article is part of the Research TopicAddressing Antimicrobial Resistance: Multimodal Strategies for Low-Resource EnvironmentsView all articles
Impact of a Pharmacist Driven Antimicrobial Stewardship Program on Inpatient Antibiotic Consumption in a Chinese Tertiary Hospital: a 5-year Retrospective Study
Provisionally accepted
Can Qian
Ting YuanFuyong ZhangShiyuan GouChunmei JiangXuebing ChenYa HuangXiaolin ZhaoYou DuChenglong LiYangyun Han*Huaiyu Su*- People’s Hospital of Deyang City, Deyang, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Introduction: Antimicrobial Stewardship programs are crucial for reducing overall antibiotic consumption, but in practice, there are often issues with unclear responsibilities and ambiguous tasks. Pharmacists play a critical role in AMS due to their combined management functions and professional expertise.Objective: To investigate the impact of a Pharmacist-Driven Antimicrobial Stewardship program on the consumption of antibiotics in a hospital.Methods: Under the support of a hospital top-level design, we implemented a Pharmacist-Driven Antimicrobial Stewardship program led by pharmacists and involving multiple disciplines. The program focused on revising the antibiotic formulary and optimizing key points of antibiotic management, using the inpatient Antibiotic Use Density as the core control indicator. This was conducted through three phases: program initiation, implementation, monitoring and control. Clinical pharmacists ensured the long-term operational quality of the program. We evaluated the impact of the program on relevant indicators of antimicrobial consumption in inpatient. Results: Compared to the pre-implementation year of 2020, the annual Antibiotic Use Density for inpatients across the hospital decreased by 22.28% in 2024, reaching 36.26 defined daily doses/100 patient days. Additionally, the monthly inpatient Antibiotic Use Density in 2024 was significantly reduced (p < 0.001), along with the antibiotic usage rate (p < 0.05), expenditure on antibiotics per inpatient (p < 0.001), and the proportion of antibiotic expenditure relative to total for inpatients (p < 0.001). The rational use of antimicrobial agents in inpatient wards has been enhanced. Through targeted management, some antibiotics showed trends of increased or decreased usage. The detection rates of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing Escherichia coli did not show a significant decrease.Conclusion: The Pharmacist-Driven Antimicrobial Stewardship program effectively leveraged the managerial roles and professional skills of pharmacists in rational drug use management, resulting in a significant reduction in hospital antibiotic consumption. However, to further validate its effectiveness in reversing bacterial resistance, the program requires longer-term operation and could be considered for regional expansion.
Keywords: Antimicrobial stewardship, hospital pharmacy, antibiotic consumption, Antibiotic use density, Rational drug use
Received: 25 Feb 2025; Accepted: 09 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Qian, Yuan, Zhang, Gou, Jiang, Chen, Huang, Zhao, Du, Li, Han and Su. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yangyun Han, People’s Hospital of Deyang City, Deyang, China
Huaiyu Su, People’s Hospital of Deyang City, Deyang, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.