Decision Aid

The main aim of ARK is to get the decision aid antibiotic prescription categories (pending diagnostic review (possible or probable) and reviewed) used in clinical practice

The ARK Decision Aid tool supports good antibiotic prescribing by clearly separating the decision to start antibiotics before full diagnostic information is available and the decision taken at antibiotic review when clinicians typically have considerably more information from the patient’s clinical progress and investigations including culture results. Using the Decision Aid ensures prescribers start antibiotics appropriately before full diagnostic information is available and patients are protected from antibiotic over use because they will only be continued when there is a good reason.

In the original ARK research the decision aid used the terms “initial” and “finalised”. Feedback from users was that the key decision to emphasise is the review and that in many cases ongoing review is still needed. So we now use the terms “pending review” and “reviewed”.

Users have also told us that its important that hospitals may have embedded different terms either because they have already established ARK with the original terminology or are using “Start Smart” and “Focus“.

ARK Champions and their teams should feel able to use the terminology which works for their hospital. The key thing is the two-step decision process which ARK supports.