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Conjunctivitis Essay

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Nursery sickness policies for conjunctivitis Introduction: In preschool children, acute infective conjunctivitis (AIC) is a common condition. It is usually mild and self-limiting, often requires no treatment or a doctor’s appointment. Evidence suggests that parents and guardians are advised by childcare providers (CPs) to take their children with conjunctivitis to their GP for assessment. However, some CPs will not permit affected children to return to child care until antibiotics have been prescribed, thus parents are obtaining antibiotics to get their child readmitted. Even though most cases (50–75%) of AIC are bacterial in origin, the aetiology is difficult to determine clinically and only 36% of doctors are confident in differentiating between viral and bacterial conjunctivitis. Perceived pressure from parents, employers, educators and pharmaceutical companies …show more content…

• Overall, 49.4% of the policies required treatment with antibiotics before a child with AIC was readmitted to nursery. • Two-hundred clinicians completed questionnaires and 42.6% replied that they had been influenced by childcare policies when deciding whether to prescribe antibiotics in this scenario. Furthermore, 15.4% admitted that childcare policies had been the only reason they prescribed antibiotics. Conclusion: • Most of the childcare providers’ sickness policies contain requirements that are inconsistent with PHE guidance. • The requirements of childcare sickness policies are likely to be resulting in unnecessary primary care consultations and thousands of prescriptions for antibiotics with little demonstrable clinical or public health benefit. To reduce inappropriate prescribing, one strategy would be to improve CPs’ understanding of AIC and encourage them to adhere to public health

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