Antimicrobial timeouts

An antimicrobial timeout is a prompt to re-evaluate a patient’s empirical antimicrobial treatment after a specified time period. In practice, a patient’s empirical treatment can be changed once laboratory reports are available, or laboratory results may indicate that it is appropriate to continue with the initial antimicrobial treatment. If no organism is isolated, the patient’s clinical condition should be reassessed.

Antimicrobial timeouts can be automatically incorporated in electronic prescribing systems; but in their absence, it may be most convenient for the pharmacy to alert clinicians of the need for reassessment, usually after 48–72 hours. If the hospital is also carrying out prospective audit and feedback, the individuals collecting the data can also take responsibility for monitoring.