{"id":104821,"date":"2016-05-30T16:11:14","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T22:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-health-pharmacist-stresses-antibiotics-awareness\/"},"modified":"2016-05-30T16:11:14","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T22:11:14","slug":"southwest-health-pharmacist-stresses-antibiotics-awareness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-health-pharmacist-stresses-antibiotics-awareness\/","title":{"rendered":"Southwest Health pharmacist stresses antibiotics awareness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Meyer\"
Meyer<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A local pharmacist has lent his knowledge to a statewide effort to educate medical professionals and members of the public about responsible antibiotic usage and stewardship.<\/p>\n

Marc Meyer is a pharmacist and infection preventionist with Southwest Health Systems. He worked with a team of 20 doctors, nurses and other medical personnel to draft a \u201cplaybook\u201d on antibiotic stewardship based on Centers For Disease Control guidelines, Meyer said. Those guidelines hadn\u2019t been updated since 2012, he said.<\/p>\n

Right now, the medical industry is discovering that bacteria are becoming more resilient, Meyer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at a point in the road where we\u2019re starting to see a lot of resistance,\u201d he said. \u201cOne thing we can do is use antibiotics more appropriately or not use them. \u2026 If we don\u2019t do this, we\u2019re going to lose antibiotics. (Bacteria) will all be resistant, and people will die from simple infections.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the CDC, overuse of antibiotics has contributed to the spread of bacteria that cause colitis, a potentially life-threatening intestinal disease.<\/p>\n

Antibiotics aren\u2019t totally benign and they have consequences and side effects, Meyer said. But they also save lives every day, he said.<\/p>\n

Medical professionals in the Four Corners area will work to educate people on why they should or shouldn\u2019t be prescribed an antibiotic, Meyer said. About 65 percent of upper respiratory ailments are viral and don\u2019t need antibiotics, he said. Doctors need to do a better job of distinguishing between viral and bacterial illnesses, and patients need to realize that there are some illnesses for which antibiotics will make no difference, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to tell the public that antibiotics are not always the best,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cSometimes it\u2019s best to wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some bacteria are present in the body that do no harm and cause no symptoms, Meyer said. Medical professionals need to be watchful of those and make sure they aren\u2019t prescribing antibiotics to fight these harmless bacteria, he said.<\/p>\n

In the past, antibiotics were prescribed for 10 to 14 days, Meyer said. Now, it\u2019s customary to prescribe them for five to seven days, he said.<\/p>\n

Since Southwest Memorial Hospital is a comparatively small operation, the staff has the benefit of increased communication, Meyer said. Patients get individual attention from doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other personnel, he said. Medical personnel can take the time to narrow the scope and figure out what treatment will work best for a patient, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to change the climate,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cWe don\u2019t always need (antibiotics) for something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several other small, rural hospitals on Colorado\u2019s Western Slope work together since they may not have available to them resources that bigger hospitals might have, he said.<\/p>\n

Since most of the people who work at the hospital are employees of Southwest Health Systems, the company has a chance to control antibiotic stewardship across multiple disciplines of healthcare, Meyer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a unique opportunity here in Montezuma County,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cWe have a chance to do that in all these areas and see how it impacts the community. From the CDC\u2019s standpoint, that\u2019s why they\u2019re excited about what we\u2019re doing in the Four Corners, to see how this works in a closed setting without a lot of outside input.\u201d<\/p>\n

jklopfenstein@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

update CDC\u2019s guidelines<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":104822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5843],"tags":[21,61,60,210],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-104821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-living","tag-cortez","tag-health","tag-montezuma-county","tag-southwest-health-system"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104821"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=104821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}