Antimicrobial stewardship is a multidisciplinary and interprofessional approach to optimizing antimicrobial use, minimizing patient harm (including drug toxicity), and limiting the spread of drug resistance in a population.1  Antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASPs) are formal institutional programs established to achieve these aims by integrating principles of appropriate antimicrobial selection, dosing, route of administration, and duration of therapy on the basis of the intended infectious indication.2,3 

The first consensus recommendations for establishing ASPs in acute care hospitals were published in a 2007 joint statement from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology (SHEA).3  This document provided evidence-based interventions to ensure the most efficient use of available resources, categorized as 2 core and 8 supplemental strategies.3  Core strategies are proactive interventions that are not mutually exclusive; these strategies are the foundation of ASPs. The core strategies are prospective audit with intervention...

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