Delays in starting antibiotics for bacteremia can be significant. One community teaching hospital implemented a protocol to notify a pharmacist whenever a blood culture turned positive so appropriate therapy could be started faster and infection-related mortality dropped from 25% to 11%.
The protocol is called the rapid administration of antimicrobials by an infectious diseases specialist (RAIDS) protocol. It is a very simple design. When a blood culture turns positive, an infectious disease pharmacist is called by the microbiology lab. This pharmacist reviews current antibiotic orders, calls the appropriate physician, takes an order if antibiotics need to be changed, and hand-delivers the antibiotic to the patient’s nurse at the bedside.
In addition to the infection-related mortality decrease, implementation of this protocol brought the time to first antibiotic dose for new bacteremia down from over 9 hours to 1 hour and 23 minutes.
To learn more about the study supporting this protocol go to pharmacyjoe.com/raids. And to get my free visual critical care antibiotic guide go to pharmacyjoe.com/abx.
If you like this post, check out my book – A Pharmacist’s Guide to Inpatient Medical Emergencies: How to respond to code blue, rapid response calls, and other medical emergencies.
Leave a Reply