Doctors 'being paid not to give out antibiotics'

MichaelAwkward said:
Sadly this target of reducing antibiotic use will be basically useless in reducing the problem of resistance.

I know several international students (from China, HK, Korea, India, Bangladesh) and in the time I've known them, they've all used antibiotics either brought from their home country or bought from an international shop here without a prescription, without any real knowledge of why they're using them, whenever they've felt ill or had a cold. When I asked one of them about it, they just said it was what they did back home, what their parents did, etc etc.

Preventing antibiotics from becoming useless needs international action. Same as climate change.
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You can buy antibiotics over the counter in lots of places, it does seem futile to try to counter the trend in resistance to them without some sort of international cooperation.
 
MichaelAwkward said:
Sadly this target of reducing antibiotic use will be basically useless in reducing the problem of resistance.

I know several international students (from China, HK, Korea, India, Bangladesh) and in the time I've known them, they've all used antibiotics either brought from their home country or bought from an international shop here without a prescription, without any real knowledge of why they're using them, whenever they've felt ill or had a cold. When I asked one of them about it, they just said it was what they did back home, what their parents did, etc etc.

Preventing antibiotics from becoming useless needs international action. Same as climate change.
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Of course it's of use. Even a tiny reduction in un-needed abx use would help lower the chance of a resistant strain developing.
 
stopper said:
Who said any thing about people? "They" as in GSK, Dupont, etc. just about any drug company that makes billions from sick people. The NHS do have to pay for their drugs you know.
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So you're saying that doctors are intentionally not using antibiotics, which we buy from the pharmaceutical companies, not to reduce resistance but instead to make people sick so pharmaceutical companies get rich.

Wut.
 
Don’t incentivise withholding of antibiotics!

By Rupert Payne | Published: February 18, 2015








Don’t prescribe too many antibiotics. And just to make sure you behave, we’ll pay you not to. That’s the latest message GPs are being given by the government. I personally find this very irritating.

GPs are well aware of the public health implications of prescribing too many antibiotics, and the consequent risks of antibiotic resistance. And importantly, many patients are also aware of this problem. However, it is also well recognised that consultations with patients presenting with relatively mild infections can be challenging, with clinicians feeling pressurised into prescribing unnecessarily. Interestingly, this is often at odds with the patient’s expectations, although we’ve previously demonstrated that GP surgeries that prescribe more antibiotics also have greater patient satisfaction.

So what this latest incentive simply does is make an already difficult consultation even more challenging. Dr Smith is no longer withholding amoxicillin for good public health reasons, but is making money out of it too. There is the potential to undermine trust in the doctor, and even have the perverse effect of aggravating inappropriate prescribing, with prescribing decisions being unduly influenced by a difficult conversation rather than by clinical need.

Perhaps it would be better if the Department of Health incentivised training in consultations skills focusing on difficult consultations and better understanding patients’ expectations around antibiotic use? Improving patient education around this area would also be welcome. However, ill-conceived incentives are not the way forward.
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