Table 2.

Vancomycin/teicoplanin prescribing for inpatients not conforming to agreed guidelines.

	Number of prescriptions not conforming (Number of prescriptions not conforming/1000 prescriptions audited)
Category of prescribing confirmed as not conforming	Pre-ICF Audit-9 weeks	During ICF-104 weeks	P value
Empirical treatment	94 (516)	157 (145)	< 0.0001
Prophylaxis	25 (137)	26 (24)	< 0.0001
β-lactam sensitive isolate*	8 (44)	8 (7)	< 0.0005
Coagulase-negative staphylococcus in only one blood culture	10 (55)	40 (37)	NS
Primary treatment of antibiotic colitis	11 (60)	17 (16)	< 0.0005
Treatment of MRSA colonization	3 (16)	65 (60)	< 0.05
All the above†	151 (830)	313 (288)	< 0.0001

N.B. Patients in the Bone Marrow Transplant Centre and Paediatric and Neonatal ICU were not audited. During ICF intervention for MRSA, colonization became most common presumably due to indiscriminate dependence on laboratory reports by clinicians.

^*From patients without ‘penicillin allergy’.

^†Among the 182 patients in the pre ICF audit and the 1086 audited during the conduct ofICF, the remainder were deemed to have conformed; 31 and 773, respectively. However, 3and 51, respectively, of the latter were actually ‘unevaluable’.

P values refer to two tailed χ sqauare tests; NS = not significant.