Use of university directed studies and undergraduate summer student research programs to create enhanced antibiograms and improve antimicrobial stewardship

Although hospital antibiograms are widely available to guide antimicrobial selection, they may overcall resistance when extrapolated to common community-acquired infections, such as meningitis, pneumonia, cystitis, and skin and soft tissue infections. The Clinical & Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) has called for the need for enhanced community antibiograms but acknowledges the challenges due to a lack of centralized laboratories to take on this responsibility. LifeLabs British Columbia (BC), a regional laboratory network with 129 collection centres in rural and urban BC communities, is uniquely positioned to address this challenge. In summer 2025, we recruited 10 university undergraduate students from various disciplines (medicine, pharmacy, and neuroscience) through the University of British Columbia directed studies and undergraduate summer student research programs to create enhanced antibiograms to address community needs. Under the supervision of a clinical assistant professor and using data collected at LifeLabs regional microbiology laboratories, the students statistically analyzed results for the benefit of community healthcare, public health, and antimicrobial stewardship teams. These antibiogram topics range from blood culture, bacterial meningitis pathogens, pediatric urine culture, sexually transmitted infections, carbapenem-resistant organisms, ear pathogens, and tetracycline baseline resistance rates in various communities. We acknowledge that many of the published infectious disease guidelines are based on American data, which are not always applicable to the BC and Canadian population. An evaluation is required to determine whether these clinical guidelines are still within the Canadian context based on local BC community data. This presentation will share our successes and challenges in this journey and aims to influence colleagues in academia and clinical laboratories to start the same initiative. We successfully conducted 10 different antibiogram projects during the summer, some of which have already been accepted for peer-reviewed journal publications. This experience has demonstrated how we can make use of the resources in education to go the extra mile for patients and the community.