Antibiotic prescribing in primary care, adherence to guidelines and unnecessary prescribing - an Irish perspective

BMC Family Practice

Research Article

Colin P Bradley¹  Marion Murphy²  Stephen Byrne³ 

[1] Department of General Practice, School of Medicine, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland;Department of General Practice, School of Medicine, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland;Pharmaceutical Care Research Group, School of Pharmacy, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland;Pharmaceutical Care Research Group, School of Pharmacy, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland;

关键词: Amoxicillin;    Otitis Medium;    Continue Medical Education;    Antibiotic Prescription;    Tonsillitis;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2296-13-43

 received in 2011-11-27, accepted in 2012-05-28,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundInformation about antibiotic prescribing practice in primary care is not available for Ireland, unlike other European countries. The study aimed to ascertain the types of antibiotics and the corresponding conditions seen in primary care and whether general practitioners (GPs) felt that an antibiotic was necessary at the time of consultation. This information will be vital to inform future initiatives in prudent antibiotic prescribing in primary care.MethodsParticipating GPs gathered data on all antibiotics prescribed by them in 100 consecutive patients’ consultations as well as data on the conditions being treated and whether they felt the antibiotic was necessary.Results171 GPs collected data on 16,899 consultations. An antibiotic was prescribed at 20.16% of these consultations. The majority were prescribed for symptoms or diagnoses associated with the respiratory system; the highest rate of prescribing in these consultations were for patients aged 15–64 years (62.23%). There is a high rate of 2nd and 3rd line agents being used for common ailments such as otitis media and tonsillitis. Amoxicillin, which is recommended as 1st line in most common infections, was twice as likely to be prescribed if the prescription was for deferred used or deemed unnecessary by the GP.ConclusionThe study demonstrates that potentially inappropriate prescribing is occurring in the adult population and the high rate of broad-spectrum antimicrobial agents is a major concern. This study also indicates that amoxicillin may be being used for its placebo effect rather than specifically for treatment of a definite bacterial infection.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Murphy et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.