Team registration for Antibiotic stewardship/Neonatal sepsis (ASNS) is well underway. Teams have submitted letters of intent and are finalizing team rosters.
As registration continues, Dr. Carl Seashore, a general pediatrician at University of North Carolina (UNC), has been conducting site visits to potential hospital teams to discuss the use and implementation of the Kaiser sepsis calculator. While not a requirement for participation in the ASNS initiative, use of the calculator is a recommendation for teams to support the decrease in exposure to any antimicrobial for infants born at greater than 34 weeks gestation with a maternal indication and/or clinical presentation of sepsis. Dr. Seashore has been utilizing the Kaiser sepsis calculator in the Newborn Nursery at UNC with a limited population of infants and has been able to demonstrate a significant reduction in the number of infants exposed to antimicrobials.
Baseline data collection for the ASNS initiative will begin in November 2016 and continue for three months. A kickoff meeting will be held in January 2017 with initiative data collection to begin in February 2017.