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Introduction: The position paper on critical care pharmacy services describes two tiers of responsibilities: essential and desirable activities. Activities are categorized into five domains: patient care, quality improvement, research and scholarship, training and education, and professional development. Documentation of these activities can be important for justifying pharmacist positions, comparing pharmacy practice models, conducting performance evaluations, and tracking individual workload; however, limited recommendations are provided for standardized productivity tracking, and national practices remain largely uncharacterized. Objectives: The purpose of this survey was to describe documentation practices of critical care pharmacist activities. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was distributed via email to 1694 members of the ACCP critical care practice research network. The survey asked respondents to describe the methods used to document productivity as it relates to the 5 domains. Results: Seventy-nine (4.7%) critical care pharmacists from 63 institutions completed the survey. Intervention documentation was used for position justification and annual reviews among 54.4% and 44.1% of pharmacists, respectively. Pharmacists were routinely expected to perform additional responsibilities beyond patient care that contribute to overall productivity, but the percentage of institutions that track these activities as a measure of pharmacist productivity was relatively low: quality improvement (46%), research/scholarship (29%), training/education (38%), and professional development (27%). Documentation of these additional responsibilities and activities was primarily used for annual evaluations, but the majority of respondents answered that no standardized method for tracking activities existed. In multivariate regression, dedicated ICU pharmacists was a significant predictor for increased satisfaction (Exp(ß) 4.498, 95% CI 1.054-19.187, P = .042). Conclusion: Practice variation exists in how and for what intent critical care pharmacists track productivity. Further evaluation and standardization of productivity tracking may aid in position justification and practice model evaluation for dedicated ICU pharmacists in today's value-based era.
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OBJECTIVES: Concern for late detection of bacterial pathogens is a barrier to early de-escalation efforts. The purpose of this study was to assess blood, respiratory and urine culture results at 72 h to test the hypothesis that early negative culture results have a clinically meaningful negative predictive value. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed all patients admitted to the medical intensive care unit between March 2012 and July 2018 with blood cultures obtained. Blood, respiratory and urine culture results were assessed for time to positivity, defined as the time between culture collection and preliminary species identification. The primary outcome was the negative predictive value of negative blood culture results at 72 h. Secondary outcomes included sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of blood, respiratory and urine culture results. RESULTS: The analysis included 1567 blood, 514 respiratory and 1059 urine cultures. Of the blood, respiratory and urine cultures ultimately positive, 90.3%, 76.2% and 90.4% were positive at 72 h. The negative predictive value of negative 72-h blood, respiratory and urine cultures were 0.99, 0.82 and 0.97, respectively. Antibiotic de-escalation had good specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value for finalized negative cultures. CONCLUSION: Negative blood and urine culture results at 72 h had a high negative predictive value. These findings have important ramifications for antimicrobial stewardship efforts and support protocolized re-evaluation of empiric antibiotic therapy at 72 h. Caution should be used in patients with clinically suspected pneumonia, since negative respiratory culture results at 72 h were weakly predictive of finalized negative cultures.