Skip main navigation

Measurement used for improvement

In this article Dr Adrian Brink explains the measurements that were undertaken and disseminated
multicoloured tapes measures fanned out into the shaper of a star
© flickr photo by frankieleon shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license
To facilitate measurement and feedback a “low-hanging fruit” toolkit, consisting of an Excel-based standardised measurement template/tool, was developed and launched in July 2012 for the five interventions.

Part of the template used is presented below:

This is the section of the template created to record progress during the intervention. The template is headed AS Project - Tracking Compliance to an Intervention. There are five columns. The left hand column shows the weeks, then the number of patients reviewed, the total number of patients compliant, % compliance and Median % compliance. (Click to take a closer look)

Once the data had been completed a run chart was generated to use at feedback meetings.

This is the run chart created by the data input into the template. It is entitles Weekly Run Chart: % compliance to stewardship intervention. The y axis shows the % compliance ranging from 0 to 100 and the x axis records the weeks from 1 - 40. The graph shows that improvements were made in compliance between week 28-40 (Click to take a closer look)

All percentages calculated as % of patients seen on clinical pharmacy rounds with:

  • the denominator: the number of patients on antibiotics that were seen by the pharmacist during ward rounds
  • the numerator: the number of patients where the particular “low-hanging-fruit” intervention was implemented.
  • data was collated weekly at each hospital
  • submitted monthly to the AMS project manager.

The WHO ATC index with defined daily doses (DDDs)/100 bed days was adopted as the method of measurement of the impact of the AMS program on overall antibiotic consumption. You may want to revise “Introducing DDDs as a measure” from Week 3.

© UoD and BSAC
This article is from the free online

Antimicrobial Stewardship: Managing Antibiotic Resistance

Created by
FutureLearn - Learning For Life

Reach your personal and professional goals

Unlock access to hundreds of expert online courses and degrees from top universities and educators to gain accredited qualifications and professional CV-building certificates.

Join over 18 million learners to launch, switch or build upon your career, all at your own pace, across a wide range of topic areas.

Start Learning now