Introduction
UTIs
Up to 85% of antibiotic treatment courses in nursing homes (NHs) are initiated empirically before results of cultures are available.Cumulative susceptibility reports, commonly called antibiograms, summarize the susceptibility rates of bacteria recovered from cultures collected in a health care facility over a specific time frame. Clinicians can use these tools to guide empirical antibiotic choices, increasing the likelihood that the first prescribed antibiotic will provide adequate activity while awaiting culture and other diagnostic studies.Our objective was to assess how urinary antibiograms may be associated with empirical antibiotics selected by NH clinicians treating clinically suspected UTIs. We hypothesized that NH clinicians using a urinary antibiogram would be more likely to select empirical antibiotics that were active against potential urinary pathogens. We further hypothesized that compared with a traditionally formatted urinary antibiogram,