Evaluating antibiotic stewardship in a tertiary care hospital in Kerala, India: a qualitative interview study

To determine what barriers and facilitators to antibiotic stewardship exist within a healthcare facility.

1300-bed tertiary care private hospital located in the state of Kerala, India.

31 semistructured interviews and 4 focus groups with hospital staff ranging from physicians, nurses, pharmacists and a clinical microbiologist.

Key facilitators of antibiotic stewardship (AS) at the hospital included a dedicated committee overseeing appropriate inpatient antibiotic use, a prompt microbiology laboratory, a high level of AS understanding among staff, established guidelines for empiric prescribing and an easily accessible antibiogram. We identified the following barriers: limited access to clinical pharmacists, physician immunity to change regarding stewardship policies, infrequent antibiotic de-escalation, high physician workload, an incomplete electronic medical record (EMR), inadequate AS programme (ASP) physical visibility and high antibiotic use in the community.

Opportunities for improvement at this institution include increasing accessibility to clinical pharmacists, implementing strategies to overcome physician immunity to change and establishing a more accessible and complete EMR. Our findings are likely to be of use to institutions developing ASPs in lower resource settings.