Clinicians, says a study, prescribed antibiotics without an infection-related diagnosis nearly half of the time and one in five prescriptions was provided without an in-person visit. The research looked at outpatient antibiotic prescribing and analysed more than half a million prescriptions from 514 outpatient clinics. Previous research has found antibiotics are often prescribed for certain symptoms (such as a sore throat or cough) when they should not be. Most of these types of illnesses are caused by viruses and therefore do not benefit from antibiotics, which only treat bacterial infections. The prescribers included physicians, attending physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants in key medical specialities including primary care internal medicine, obstetrics/gynaecology, family medicine, dermatology, cardiology, and gastroenterology. The study was presented at the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).
