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Exploring Experiences of Delayed Prescribing and Symptomatic Treatment for Urinary Tract Infections among General Practitioners and Patients in Ambulatory Care: A Qualitative Study

“Delayed or back up” antibiotic prescriptions and “symptomatic” treatment may help to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing for Urinary Tract Infections (UTI) in the future. However, more research needs to be conducted in this area before these strategies can be readily promoted in practice. T...

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Autores principales: Duane, Sinead, Beatty, Paula, Murphy, Andrew W., Vellinga, Akke
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5039523/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27537922
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics5030027
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author Duane, Sinead
Beatty, Paula
Murphy, Andrew W.
Vellinga, Akke
author_facet Duane, Sinead
Beatty, Paula
Murphy, Andrew W.
Vellinga, Akke
author_sort Duane, Sinead
collection PubMed
description “Delayed or back up” antibiotic prescriptions and “symptomatic” treatment may help to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing for Urinary Tract Infections (UTI) in the future. However, more research needs to be conducted in this area before these strategies can be readily promoted in practice. This study explores General Practitioner (GP) and patient attitudes and experiences regarding the use of delayed or back-up antibiotic and symptomatic treatment for UTI. Qualitative face to face interviews with General Practitioners (n = 7) from one urban and one rural practice and telephone interviews with UTI patients (n = 14) from a rural practice were undertaken. Interviews were analysed using framework analysis. GPs believe that antibiotics are necessary when treating UTI. There was little consensus amongst GPs regarding the role of delayed prescribing or symptomatic treatment for UTI. Delayed prescribing may be considered for patients with low grade symptoms and a negative dipstick test. Patients had limited experience of delayed prescribing for UTI. Half indicated they would be satisfied with a delayed prescription the other half would question it. A fear of missing a serious illness was a significant barrier to symptomatic treatment for both GP and patient. The findings of this research provide insight into antibiotic prescribing practices in general practice. It also highlights the need for further empirical research into the effectiveness of alternative treatment strategies such as symptomatic treatment of UTI before such strategies can be readily adopted in practice.
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spelling pubmed-50395232016-10-04 Exploring Experiences of Delayed Prescribing and Symptomatic Treatment for Urinary Tract Infections among General Practitioners and Patients in Ambulatory Care: A Qualitative Study Duane, Sinead Beatty, Paula Murphy, Andrew W. Vellinga, Akke Antibiotics (Basel) Article “Delayed or back up” antibiotic prescriptions and “symptomatic” treatment may help to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing for Urinary Tract Infections (UTI) in the future. However, more research needs to be conducted in this area before these strategies can be readily promoted in practice. This study explores General Practitioner (GP) and patient attitudes and experiences regarding the use of delayed or back-up antibiotic and symptomatic treatment for UTI. Qualitative face to face interviews with General Practitioners (n = 7) from one urban and one rural practice and telephone interviews with UTI patients (n = 14) from a rural practice were undertaken. Interviews were analysed using framework analysis. GPs believe that antibiotics are necessary when treating UTI. There was little consensus amongst GPs regarding the role of delayed prescribing or symptomatic treatment for UTI. Delayed prescribing may be considered for patients with low grade symptoms and a negative dipstick test. Patients had limited experience of delayed prescribing for UTI. Half indicated they would be satisfied with a delayed prescription the other half would question it. A fear of missing a serious illness was a significant barrier to symptomatic treatment for both GP and patient. The findings of this research provide insight into antibiotic prescribing practices in general practice. It also highlights the need for further empirical research into the effectiveness of alternative treatment strategies such as symptomatic treatment of UTI before such strategies can be readily adopted in practice. MDPI 2016-08-15 /pmc/articles/PMC5039523/ /pubmed/27537922 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics5030027 Text en © 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Duane, Sinead
Beatty, Paula
Murphy, Andrew W.
Vellinga, Akke
Exploring Experiences of Delayed Prescribing and Symptomatic Treatment for Urinary Tract Infections among General Practitioners and Patients in Ambulatory Care: A Qualitative Study
title Exploring Experiences of Delayed Prescribing and Symptomatic Treatment for Urinary Tract Infections among General Practitioners and Patients in Ambulatory Care: A Qualitative Study
title_full Exploring Experiences of Delayed Prescribing and Symptomatic Treatment for Urinary Tract Infections among General Practitioners and Patients in Ambulatory Care: A Qualitative Study
title_fullStr Exploring Experiences of Delayed Prescribing and Symptomatic Treatment for Urinary Tract Infections among General Practitioners and Patients in Ambulatory Care: A Qualitative Study
title_full_unstemmed Exploring Experiences of Delayed Prescribing and Symptomatic Treatment for Urinary Tract Infections among General Practitioners and Patients in Ambulatory Care: A Qualitative Study
title_short Exploring Experiences of Delayed Prescribing and Symptomatic Treatment for Urinary Tract Infections among General Practitioners and Patients in Ambulatory Care: A Qualitative Study
title_sort exploring experiences of delayed prescribing and symptomatic treatment for urinary tract infections among general practitioners and patients in ambulatory care: a qualitative study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5039523/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27537922
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics5030027
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