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Given that most common bacterial infections can be treated with antibiotic courses of 7 or fewer days, reducing standard antibiotic treatment durations may be an avenue to curtailing antibiotic overuse in long-term care.

To describe the variability in the duration of antibiotic treatment courses in long-term care across resident recipients and prescribing physicians and to determine whether this variability is influenced by prescriber preference.

Province-wide retrospective analysis of residents of Ontario, Canada, long-term care facilities in 2010.

All adults aged 66 years or older who received an incident treatment course with a systemic antibiotic while residing in an Ontario long-term care facility.

Antibiotic treatment duration was examined across residents and prescribing physicians. The proportion of a physician's treatment courses that …