Background : Glycopeptide antibiotics are the only drugs for treatment of infections due to beta-lactam-resistant Gram-positive bacteria. As the incidence of infection and colonization with vancomycin-resistant enterococci(VRE) rapidly increases, the hospital infection control practices advisory committee(HICPAC) recommends prudent vancomycin use to detect, prevent and control infection and colonization with VRE. Methods : The inpatients admitted from September to December, 1996 in Pusan National University Hospital, with Gram-positive bacterial infections were evaluated retrospectively to see whether the administrations of glycopeptide antibiotics were appropriate or not, upon comparison with the recommendations for preventing the spread of vancomycin resistance by HICPAC. Results : Teicoplanin has been chosen more frequently than vancomycin of the glycopeptide antibiotics. The indications of administration of glycopeptides in patients with pneumonia, wound infections, sepsis, and in febrile or neutropenic patients with malignancies were appropriate, but the use of glycopeptides for elimination of merely colonized bacteria in the oral cavity could not be excluded. Inappropriate use of glycopeptides was 10.6%, and inappropriately long-term use without positive culture for beta-lactam-resistant Gram-positive organisms was about 40% of total days of drug use. Conclusion : It seems essential for the quality assurance committee to make a plan in teaching the HICPAC recommendations to the medical practitioners who prescribed the glycopeptides inappropriately or used for irrelevantly long to his patient, monitor and survey their use of glycopeptides prospectively and periodically, and if there are repeated inappropriate prescriptions, a certain penalty would be given to the practitioners.