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Program Profile
Impact of an Educational and Laboratory Stewardship Intervention on Inpatient COVID-19 Therapeutics at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center
Zane A. Conrad, MD, MPHa; Alonso Pezo Salazar, MDb; Austin Akers, MDb; Tomasz Z. Jodlowski, PharmDc; Li Wang, MA, PhD, MBAa; Henning Drechsler, MDa,b; Donald F. Storey, MDa,b; Reuben J. Arasaratnam, MD, MPHa,b
aUniversity of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas
bDallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Texas
cBoise Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Idaho
Author disclosures
This work was supported by an Innovations Grant from the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine and the University of Texas Southwestern Department of Internal Medicine Seldin Symposium ResearchFunds.
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Federal Practitioner, Frontline Medical Communications Inc., the US Government, or any of its agencies. This article may discuss unlabeled or investigational use of certain drugs. Please review the complete prescribing information for specific drugs or drug combinations—including indications, contraindications, warnings, and adverse effects—before administering pharmacologic therapy to patients.
Ethics and consent
This study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Veterans Affairs North Texas Institutional Review Board (protocol code 20-047).
We report improvements in COVID-19 therapeutic prescriptions and the use of antibiotics and laboratory testing over 6 months at the DVAMC. This was correlated with a deliberate COVID-19 educational initiative that included antibiotic and laboratory stewardship interventions with simultaneous decreased reliance on ID consultation. These efforts lend support to the proof of the principle of combined educational and laboratory stewardship interventions to improve the care of COVID-19 patients, especially where ID support may not be available or is accessed remotely.
