Nurse Engagement in Antibiotic Stewardship Programs: A Scoping Review of the Literature

Hospital-based antibiotic stewardship programs (ASPs) are an important strategy in combating antibiotic resistance. Four antibiotic stewardship interventions are recommended by the CDC as particularly well-designed to engage nurses. However, there is limited information on whether and how existing hospital-based ASPs reflect these practices.

To describe how nurses are being engaged in hospital ASPs and to what extent this overlaps with the CDC framework.

This scoping review included studies published in the last 10 years on engaging nurses in hospital-based ASPs. Three databases, PubMed, CINAHL, and Embase, were searched.

The search yielded 195 unique articles. Ten articles were retained for review detailing how nurses are engaged. One CDC recommended intervention, initiating discussion of antibiotic treatment, appeared in nine studies.

Although hospitals are engaging nurses in antibiotic stewardship programs, their selected approaches do not reflect the full breadth of the opportunities identified by the CDC. More detail as to how exactly nurses engage would also be a useful addition to the literature.

More research is needed on nurse engagement on culturing or testing and penicillin allergy evaluation. Standardized measures should be collected and reported to measure the impact of engaging nurses in ASPs.