Staff nurses as antimicrobial stewards: An integrative literature review.

Background: Guidelines on antimicrobial stewardship emphasize the importance of an interdisciplinary team, but current practice focuses primarily on defining the role of infectious disease physicians and pharmacists; the role of inpatient staff nurses as antimicrobial stewards is largely unexplored.
Methods: An updated integrative review method guided a systematic appraisal of 13 articles spanning January 2007-June 2016. Quantitative and qualitative peer-reviewed publications including staff nurses and antimicrobial knowledge or stewardship were incorporated into the analysis.
Results: Two predominant themes emerged from this review: (1) nursing knowledge, education, and information needs; and (2) patient safety and organizational factors influencing antibiotic management.
Discussion: Focused consideration to empower and educate staff nurses in antimicrobial management is needed to strengthen collaboration and build an interprofessional stewardship workforce.
Conclusions: Further exploration on the integration and measurement of nursing participation is needed to accelerate this important patient safety initiative.
(Copyright © 2017 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)