Why a Global-PPS?

The Global Point Prevalence Survey of Antimicrobial Consumption and Resistance (Global-PPS) offers a simple, freely available web-based tool to measure and monitor antimicrobial prescribing and resistance in hospitals worldwide. The Global-PPS has established a global network of hospitals conducting point prevalence surveys and provides quantifiable measures to assess and compare quantity and quality of antimicrobial prescribing and resistance in hospitalized adults, children and neonates worldwide. The Global-PPS creates global awareness about antibiotic use and resistance and is instrumental in planning and supporting national and local stewardship interventions in a range of resource and geographical settings.

Main aims - Critical benefits for the hospitals?

The Global-PPS provides a tool to:

  • Evaluate antimicrobial prescribing practices and survey performance indicators in hospitals (identify burden),
  • Help designing hospital interventions and identifying targets for quality improvement of antimicrobial prescribing and the prevention of Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) (change practice),
  • Assess the effectiveness of the interventions through repeated PPSs (measure impact).

What kind of feedback is provided to you?

After finalization of data entry and validation, the hospital will be able to download a feedback report which can be used for local communications and presentations. Hospital-specific antimicrobial prevalence figures will be plotted against overall mean national and continental results. The feedback reports also on several antibiotic quality indicators.

Next, hospitals can at any time extract their own data in an Excel file. These data can be analyzed for own purposes.

The data

Data collection implies conducting a “one day survey” including hospitalized inpatients at 8 o’clock on the day of the PPS whereby detailed data is collected for those patients receiving an antimicrobial treatment.

Data are collected on paper forms, and subsequently entered in a database using the Global-PPS tool, a web-based application for data entry, validation and reporting.

Essential data to collect are the patients’ age and gender, antimicrobial agent, dose per administration, number of doses per day and route of administration. Besides antibiotics, also antifungals, antimycotics, antivirals, antibiotics for the treatment of tuberculosis and antimalarials are surveyed. Other mandatory variables include the anatomical site of infection or prophylaxis according to a list of provided reasons for treatment or prophylaxis, indication for therapy (community versus hospital acquired infection or prophylaxis) and whether the treatment choice is determined by detected micro-organisms and available microbiological or biomarker data. For the optional HAI module, extra details on invasive devices are collected (e.g. peripheral vascular catheter, indwelling urinary catheter etc.).

Denominator data are the number of admitted patients and the number of beds in each department.

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Foreseen timeline

Three surveys are available each year (January-April, May-August and Septem­ber-December). Hospitals can choose to participate in one to maximum three surveys a year. As such, they can follow up on interventions or investigate for example seasonal variation.

Any hospital worldwide is welcome to participate. Bigger hospitals who have participated at least once in the Global-PPS are able to participate with a sub­sample of the hospital whereby a set of certain ward types can be targeted (e.g. all ICUs, all surgical or all paediatric wards). They will be able to download a longitudinal feedback report showing results for all surveys they have completed.

Last but not least...

Data are completely anonymously entered online on the Global-PPS tool and safeguarded at the ESAC server of the University of Antwerp. The data remains the property of the hospital. bioMérieux has no access to these data, nor does the University of Antwerp disclose hospital names to any third party, including bioMérieux. Participation of hospitals and all fieldwork at the hospital level is done on a voluntary basis. The Global-PPS team encourages regional or country specific analysis led by a “local collaborating participant” or the “national or regional Global-PPS participant”.

Important

Since the introduction of the new protocol in 2019, two ways of collecting data are possible:

  • The original, basic PPS allows to survey antimicrobial use, Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) and Antimicrobial Resistance
  • The full version of the PPS including an extra HAI module allows to survey invasive device use in more detail. In addition to the basic PPS, one extra form per patient on antimicrobials needs to be completed. The extra HAI module is completely optional.

The new protocol also allows the surveillance of COVID-19 patients.