Improving Antimicrobial Use in Hospitalized Patients

Dear Colleagues,

We are editing a Special Issue in the journal Pharmacy, focusing on “Improving Antimicrobial Use in Hospitalized Patients”. Overuse and misuse of antibiotics have resulted in rapidly increasing rates of resistance, making common infectious diseases more difficult to treat. The use of antimicrobial stewardship principles to slow the emergence and spread of resistant bacteria has been recognized globally as an important tool in optimizing antimicrobial usage. Through optimization of drug, dose, duration, and spectrum of activity, antimicrobial stewards can improve patient outcomes, reduce hospital-associated costs, and reduce the development of further bacterial resistance. In order to achieve these objectives, stewards and other practitioners are implementing innovative initiatives that provide practical guidance for antimicrobial use and solutions to potential barriers, as well as enhancing accountability of antibiotic prescribing to ultimately improve patient outcomes. Sharing these initiatives is invaluable, therefore, we invite you to submit your research and/or innovative methods that you’ve employed to improve antimicrobial use at your institution or health system.

We invite you to share your approaches and successes in improving antimicrobial use in hospitalized patients. We welcome submissions of all types, including original research, brief reports of original research, reviews, or short communications. In addition, we welcome submission of resident or trainee research projects that focused on improving antimicrobial use in hospitalized patients. We hope this Special Issue will inspire other stewards and practitioners to share their own practices, adopt new approaches, and innovate to advance stewardship principles.

 Pharmacy (ISSN 2226-4787, https://www.mdpi.com/journal/pharmacy) is an international scientific peer-reviewed open access journal on pharmacy education and practice published quarterly online by MDPI. It is indexed by databases including EMBASE (Elsevier), HINARI (WHO), and PubMed (NLM). 

Dr. Kayla R. Stover
Dr. Katie E. Barber
Dr. Jamie L. Wagner
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pharmacy is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.