In the United States, someone gets an antibiotic resistant infection every 11 seconds. Every 15 minutes, someone dies from one. It can happen to anyone from anywhere.
At Madison Regional Health System, we are doing our part to be antibiotics aware. This is important to our healthcare team as we move forward in improving health equity in the communities we serve. According to the CDC, “Antimicrobial resistance (AR) can affect people at any stage of life and is an issue across One Health. Many risks for AR infections are tied to social determinants of health (SDoH) – where you live, environmental exposures, how often you engage with health care, quality of care received, and socioeconomic and other factors that contribute to disparities in health outcomes.”
Antibiotic resistance occurs when an antibiotic used to treat a certain bacteria can no longer do so. Usually caused by a change in the bacterial defense mechanisms through natural processes or previous exposures to that antibiotic.
Madison Regional Health System has a multidisciplinary team that makes up our Antimicrobial Stewardship Committee. The committee offers recommendations for our providers when selecting antibiotics for specific infections. Those recommendations are based on a combination of national standards and our local antibiotic resistance patterns. We track the use of all antibiotics throughout our facility to ensure that we are using the right antibiotic for the right infection and the proper length of treatment.
Intentional or not, inappropriately or unnecessarily, the misuse of antibiotics could increase the risk of antibiotic resistance locally. This means that antibiotics we have used to treat infections would become less effective and lead to worse outcomes for our patients. These infections would require more potent antibiotics, potentially leading to worse resistance. For more information, please visit: https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/index.html
You can protect you and your loved ones! To see how you can protect yourself and your loved ones, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwznDQ_vWys&list=PLvrp9iOILTQaaTQsgX7hFOC4a0t8V5RuG&index=25