By the bioMérieux Connection Editors
Thousands of hospital pharmacists and pharmacy students are gathering in Boston for the American Society of Health System Pharmacists (ASHP) 2019 Summer Meeting & Exhibition—a major meeting of healthcare professionals where antimicrobial resistance and stewardship take center stage.
ASHP represents hospital pharmacists who care for both acute care and ambulatory patients within America’s 6,210 hospitals, including independent community hospitals, multi-hospital systems and large, integrated provider networks. ASHP has approximately 50,000 members including pharmacists, student pharmacists, and pharmacy technicians.
In alignment with the organization’s mission to help pharmacists optimize health outcomes for their patients, ASHP has made antimicrobial stewardship a top priority over the last several years. This goal is summarized in the organization’s 2013 “Statement on the Pharmacist’s Role in Antimicrobial Stewardship and Infection Prevention and Control.”
At this year’s ASHP Summer Meeting & Exhibition, presenters take aim at the overuse and misuse of medications dispensed to ambulatory patients by hospital outpatient pharmacies:
- Stewardship: Taking the Help Through the Turbulent Waters of Ambulatory Care details the growing cost of outpatient hospital pharmacies and strategies to curb waste.
- Ambulatory Antimicrobial Stewardship: Navigating New and Unknown Waters describes why leadership from the pharmacy is key to curbing the misuse of antibiotics in the ambulatory setting, where 30% of antimicrobial prescriptions are unnecessary.
In addition to new presentations and posters, ASHP provides many useful tools for hospital pharmacists who are trying to implement antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASP), as well as those who seek to strengthen existing ASPs. These tools including the following case studies:
- Killing Bugs and Saving Drugs Across a Health System: A Multi-Hospital Shared Antimicrobial Stewardship Program
- Getting Your Antimicrobial Stewardship Program off the Ground in the Small and Rural Hospital Setting
For more than 75 years, ASHP has been at the forefront of efforts to improve medication use and enhance patient safety. ASHP helps its members achieve this mission by advocating and supporting the professional practice of pharmacists in hospitals, health systems, ambulatory care clinics, and other settings spanning the full spectrum of medication use. ASHP serves its members as their collective voice on issues related to medication use and public health.
Opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of bioMérieux, Inc.
