Promoting Antibiotic Stewardship Through a Hospital Collaboration

Background: In April 2021, Lane Medical Library upgraded its Sanford Guide subscription to include Stewardship Assist, a module enabling quick access to institution-specific antibiotic guidelines. The upgrade was in response to a purchase suggestion from two clinician members of Stanford Hospital’s antibiotic stewardship program. The collection development librarian met with the clinicians to discuss the purchase and connected them to the library’s marketing and communications team (MCT). The MCT and clinicians collaborated to create a promotion plan for Stewardship Assist within the hospital. The goal was to create awareness for the Sanford Guide Stewardship Assist module and promote antibiotic stewardship.

Description: The MCT and clinicians communicated regularly to discuss the deployment status and promotion plan. MCT members received early access to the beta version of the product to understand how the resource could be utilized and to identify features to highlight. Tools such as Canva, Mailchimp, WordPress, Powerpoint, and Screencast-O-Matic were used to create infographics, emails, blog posts, slides, and short videos. Clinician feedback was incorporated to create the final marketing products. The content was provided to the clinicians and liaison librarians to share with their hospital communities and to use in presentations/classes. The goal of the marketing campaign was to raise awareness of the resource, provide instructions for accessing the resource, and provide use cases to demonstrate the resource's value. Usage data in the form of active users was reviewed approximately one month after starting the marketing campaign.

Conclusion: The novel approach of connecting the MCT with the clinicians who suggested purchasing Stewardship Assist led to a successful collaboration. Promotion efforts resulted in a four-fold increase in usage of the Sanford Guide from the time the subscription was upgraded to a month following Stewardship Assist’s launch. Future plans for marketing the Sanford Guide include highlighting the resource during new resident orientations for medical and pharmacy residents and creating business cards with graphics and QR codes for outreach events in the hospital. Future interactions between collection development librarians and hospital staff regarding new resources will continue to mention the library's MCT in order to provide additional opportunities for collaboration.