Oral antibiotic use without consulting a physician: A survey of ED patients

The purpose of our study was to determine the extent to which patients use antibiotics without consulting a physician and to examine patient character istics associated with such oral antibiotic misuse. The study design was a prospective survey. The setting was a suburban, community, emergency depart ment (ED), The participants were a convenience sample of oriented, ED patie nts who were enrolled during an 8-week period, Subjects provided written an swers to standardized questions regarding their use of oral antibiotics ove r the 12 months preceding their ED visit. Categorical and continuous data w ere analyzed by chi square and t-tests respectively. All test were P-tailed with alpha set at 0.05. One thousand three hundred sixty three subjects we re enrolled; 80% were White, 54% were female, 58% had attended college, 85% had a private physician, and 88% had health insurance. The mean age was 45 +/- 19 years. 43% of patients had used oral antibiotics within the past ye ar. Twenty-two percent of patients indicated that their physicians routinel y prescribed antibiotics for their cold symptoms, Seventeen percent of pati ents had taken "left over" antibiotics without consulting their physician, most commonly for a cough (11%) or sore throat (42%), and much less frequen tly for urinary tract infection symptoms (0.7%), Women (19% Versus 15% men; P =.04) and patients who attended college (19% Versus 14% no college; P =. 01) were more likely to have taken "left-over" antibiotics. A significant p ercentage of our ED patients had taken oral antibiotics without consulting a physician for symptoms frequently caused by viruses. Further study is war ranted to examine whether local patterns of outpatient self prescribing aff ect community oral antibiotic resistance. (Am J Emerg Med 2001;19:57-60. Co pyright (C) 2001 by W.B, Saunders Company).