A new study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), attempts to answer an important question facing health policymakers and hospitals: Does faster administration of antibiotics for sepsis patients lead to overtreating patients who don’t actually have infections?

Researchers reviewed the care of nearly 10,000 patients treated by dozens of emergency physicians and found wide differences in how quickly antibiotics were given. Some doctors consistently moved faster than others. Importantly, doctors who gave antibiotics sooner were no more likely to give them unnecessarily than doctors who took longer. 

The study also explored why these differences exist. Doctors who treated patients more quickly tended to work proactively — they ran tasks in parallel rather than one step at a time, proactively coordinated with nurses and the care team early, and felt empowered to push past system-level bottlenecks such as delays pharmacy delays. The takeaway is encouraging: faster sepsis care doesn’t mean lower-quality care. With the right systems and teamwork in place, patients can get timely, lifesaving treatment without increasing unnecessary antibiotic use.

This is important because it repudiates a common pushback against aggressive sepsis timelines – the worry that rushing treatment causes harm through overuse of antibiotics.

Read the full article here.