Using DDD as a measure within an antimicrobial stewardship programme

So you know a little more about DDDs as a metric. You’ve had a look at how to use DDDs. And although they are not perfect, they are often used to monitor antimicrobial stewardship programmes in a hospital, and to assess the impact of interventions aimed at improving the quality of prescribing in a hospital. There is a drawback, of course though, and that is that whilst they do measure the quantity of antibiotic prescribing, I do wonder sometimes, to what extent that really reflects the quality of antibiotic prescribing. So the quantitative data will tell us how much antibiotic we’re using, but it doesn’t tell us why it’s being used, or whether that use is appropriate.

These are important questions, and we’ll explore these in the next few steps.