What's Going Around?
Oklahoma Joins CDC to Spread the Message About Colds, Flu and Antibiotics
Get Smart: Know When Antibiotics Work is a national public education campaign, aimed at helping Americans become better informed about appropriate antibiotic treatment, especially during the cold and flu season. The campaign’s key messages are the basic medical facts that antibiotics do not effectively treat colds, flu and other viral illnesses. It is important to understand that antibiotics do not kill viruses, do not make patients with viral infections feel better and do not yield a faster recover or keep others from getting sick.
Recent research1 shows that most Americans have either missed the message about appropriate antibiotic use or they simply don’t believe it. It’s a case of mistaken popular belief winning out over fact. According to public opinion, there is a false perception that antibiotics cure everything. Americans believe in the power of antibiotics so much that many patients go to the doctor expecting and requesting to receive a prescription, and they do. Tens of millions of antibiotics prescribed in doctors’ offices each year are for viral infections, and therefore inappropriate.
Physicians who continue to prescribe antibiotics inappropriately also say that they are often too pressured for time to engage in lengthy explanations with patients or their parents about why antibiotics won’t work for viruses. Also, the diagnosis can be uncertain, as many symptoms for viral and bacterial infections are similar, so sending the patients home with a prescription for antibiotics may be a “better safe than sorry” tactic. Perhaps most interesting, doctors report that their patients often demand antibiotics.
The first step in reversing this problem is to build public knowledge and awareness of when antibiotics work and when they don’t. Americans need to know that the pills that seem to help can actually hurt when taken inappropriately . Antibiotics are wonderfully effective medications when taken for the right reasons, but using them when they are not needed increases everyone’s risk of catching an antibiotic-resistant infection this cold and flu season.
Sick individuals aren’t the only people who can suffer the consequences of antibiotic resistance. Families and entire communities feel the impact when disease-causing bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. These antibiotic-resistant bacteria can be spread to family members, school mates and co-workers – infecting the community with a new strain of bacteria that is more complicated to cure and more expensive to treat.
Patients and parents should start by talking to their doctors about appropriate antibiotic use and following their orders for their own health, the health of their children, and the health of the community.
1 McCaig LF, Besser RE, Hughes JC. Antimicrobial-drug prescription in ambulatory care settings, United States, 1992-2000. Emerg Inf Dis [serial online] 2003 Apr [accessed 5 September 2003];8,pages 432-437.
Becky Coffman, RN, MPH,CIC
Nurse Epidemiologist Communicable Division