Incorporating Pharmacy Students Into Antimicrobial Stewardship Pharmacists

Objective. The purpose of this study was to investigate actual and potential fourth-year doctor of pharmacy students’ involvement in Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs. Background. Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs (ASPs) aim to optimize antimicrobial selection, dosing, route, and duration of therapy in order to maximize clinical outcomes through treatment or prevention of infection while minimizing emergence of resistance, adverse drug reactions, and costs. Methods. Studies were identified through search databases CINAHL Plus with Full Text, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, and MEDLINE. Following a review of the literature, articles were filtered to include those that identified incorporating pharmacy students or pharmacists on an antimicrobial stewardship team. The role of the pharmacist was evaluated for potential extrapolation to pharmacy students. Non-English articles were excluded. Results. Twenty-two articles were found to meet inclusion criteria. Of these, two mentioned the use of pharmacy students. Implementation of student into ASPs increases assistance in such areas as patient education, intravenous to oral conversions, streamlining or de-escalation, and dose optimization. Conclusion. Incorporating pharmacy students into ASPs can assist program directors in achieving their goals and growing their programs with limited resources. Students’ role may be extrapolated to what the pharmacists have already been doing as a part of the antimicrobial stewardship team. However, future investigations are required to further understand the role of pharmacy students within ASPs. Grants. No grants were funded for this study