Introduction: A patient's transition from hospitalization to discharge may represent an additional opportunity for antibiotic stewardship.
Methods: We reviewed antimicrobial drugs prescribed at discharge to patients at our medical center over a nine-month period, and calculated the total duration of inpatient and outpatient antibiotic therapy.
Results: The median duration of inpatient antibiotics was three days (interquartile range [IQR] four days), of outpatient antibiotics was seven days (IQR six days), and of total antibiotics 10 days (IQR six days).
Conclusions: Our results align with the only previously published study of oral antibiotics prescribed at hospital discharge, both in the duration of inpatient and outpatient therapy and in the fact that about 60 percent of the treatment duration occurred after discharge. However, the median total antibiotic duration of 10 days is longer than that recommended by national and institutional guidelines for some of the most common infections in hospitalized patients.