Impact of multidisciplinary team escalating approach on antibiotic stewardship in the United Arab Emirates

Antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASP) are an essential strategy to combat antimicrobial resistance. This study aimed to measure the impact of an ASP multidisciplinary team (MDT) escalating intervention on improvement of clinical, microbiological, and other measured outcomes in hospitalised adult patients from medical, intensive care, and burns units. The escalating intervention reviewed the patients’ cases in the intervention group through the clinical pharmacists in the wards and escalated complex cases to ID clinical pharmacist and ID physicians when needed, while only special cases required direct infectious disease (ID) physicians review. Both non-intervention and intervention groups were each followed up for six months. The study involved a total of 3000 patients, with 1340 (45%) representing the intervention group who received a total of 5669 interventions. In the intervention group, a significant reduction in length of hospital stay (p < 0.01), readmission (p < 0.01), and mortality rates (p < 0.01) was observed. Antibiotic use of the WHO AWaRe Reserve group decreased in the intervention group (relative rate change = 0.88). Intravenous to oral antibiotic ratio in the medical ward decreased from 4.8 to 4.1. The presented ASP MDT intervention, utilizing an escalating approach, successfully improved several clinical and other measured outcomes, demonstrating the significant contribution of clinical pharmacists atimproving antibiotic use and informing antimicrobial stewardship.