Resources for preparing and using antibiograms in hospital settings

This course has been developed as part of a series of short courses for the ISAC Academy looking at various infection issues.

It is designed to help you increase your understanding about how and why antibiograms are used in hospital settings to help treat infections.

Course Aims

This course is aimed at laboratories with no previous experience with antibiograms, up to those that are experienced but wish to learn more about how they can share their data with external surveillance systems. It functions as a guide to the resources that are available to assist with the preparation and dissemination of antibiograms as an aid to the antimicrobial stewardship activities of hospitals.

As this course is designed for learners with a range of experience, the top of each step contains recommendations on the target audience for that page. A description of each target audience along with the course content covered as a whole is as follows:

A. No experience with antibiograms

Audience A should have some prior experience with antimicrobial susceptibility testing but want to learn how to create and share antibiograms.

Content will cover background on antimicrobial susceptibility testing, preparing an antibiogram, best practices, sharing data internally and externally.

B: Some experience with antibiograms

Audience B should have some prior experience with antibiograms but want to learn how to improve and share them.

Content will cover preparing an antibiogram, best practices, sharing data internally and externally.

C: Experienced with antibiograms

Audience C should be experienced with antibiograms but want to learn how to share data with external surveillance systems.

Content will cover sharing antibiogram data externally.

Throughout the course, there will be signposting to guides, toolkits and other useful sources of information. There will also be quizzes to test your knowledge at various points throughout the course. All audiences are expected to attempt all questions. For audiences B and C, you may not read some question content on the course, however should be able to draw on your prior knowledge and experience to complete these

By the end of this course, all audiences will be able to...

• Understand the different ways AST data are used in healthcare.
• Explain AST breakpoints.
• Explain the main features of a good antibiogram.
• Appreciate the need for guidelines and best practices in the making of antibiograms.
• Understand examples of the software available to record AST data and construct antibiograms.
• Know where to look for guides and further sources of information.
• Describe tools and surveillance systems for disseminating data.

Meet the Educators

Prof. Fred Tenover serves as Distinguished Professor of Microbiology at the University of Dayton. He has a long-standing interest in clinical microbiology, antimicrobial susceptibility testing, mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance, and development of rapid diagnostic methods for infectious diseases. He was a member of the CLSI Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Subcommittee for 17 years. After serving as Associate Chief of Microbiology at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, he joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and served for 18 years as Associate Director for Laboratory Science in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion and then as Director of the Office of Antimicrobial Resistance. He also served as Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. He joined Cepheid, a molecular diagnostics company based in California in 2008 as Head of Scientific Affairs, and also served as Consulting Professor of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine, until moving to Dayton in February 2023. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Medical Microbiology and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the International Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. He has authored over 370 publications and edited 11 books.

Janet Hindler has worked as a clinical microbiologist for over 5 decades, mostly at UCLA Health System, Los Angeles, CA and currently at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. She has written and taught extensively in the area of antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) which included collaborations with the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Association of Public Health Laboratories. She is a fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology and long-standing volunteer with the CLSI Subcommittee on AST. She has authored or co-authored numerous publications and book chapters and has received many awards for her contributions to AST and clinical microbiology.