The Issues Of Antibiotics Misuse

In the last decade, the number of prescriptions for antibiotics has increases. Even though, antibiotics are helpful, an excess amount of antibiotics can be dangerous. Quite often antibiotics are wrongly prescribed to cure viruses when they are meant to target bacteria. Antibiotics are a type of medicine that is prone to kill microorganisms, or bacteria. By examining the PBS documentary Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria and the article “U.S. government taps GlaxoSmithKline for New Antibiotics” by Ben Hirschler as well as a few other articles can help depict the problem that is of doctors prescribing antibiotics wrongly or excessively, which can led to becoming harmful to the body.

to unnecessarily overprescribe medications to their pediatric patients. Of these prescription drugs, opioid pain killers, antibiotics, and psychiatric medications are the most commonly overprescribed in child care. For example, opioid prescriptions have increased 300 percent in the past seventeen years (Boerner 20), over 50 million unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions are written each year (Murray 266), and 6.4 million psychiatric prescriptions are given to children between the ages of four and seventeen each year (Johnson 19). The overprescribing of these medications leads to children experiencing unnecessary side effects, increases the chances of addictions, and encourages drug resistance. In this essay, I will be proposing that there should be a (i) government enforced set of extensive regulations and checklists that each patient must fulfill before receiving a prescription and (ii) governmental laws prohibiting careless prescribing by doctors and hold doctors more accountable for the prescriptions they write.

A couple times a year local and national mass media put the spotlight on problems connected to antibiotic overuse. Some people consider those problems to be real and serious, and others think that the discussed topics are nothing more than new “fashionable” subjects to talk about, distracting people from “real” problems, such as climbing gas prices or war expenses. Meanwhile, antibiotic overuse continues as a common practice among US doctors and agribusinesses for the last 20 years. The practice of antibiotic overuse has put patient’s health at risk, contributed to antibiotic resistance and increased bacterial mutation to a new, stronger level; as well as it hitting the economy with new costly expenses in health care. It is time to stop

Every year a familiar scene plays out in clinic waiting rooms, chairs filled with miserable patients waiting to see their physician with complaints of a never ending cough and a constant nasal drip. More than likely, these patients will receive a prescription for antibiotics, but should they? Most acute respiratory tract infections (ARTIs), do not require an antibiotic, the symptoms will resolve themselves over time without antibiotic treatment. Healthcare experts and scientists have warned the public about the dangers of overusing antibiotics, and there are thousands of studies to support that fact, but no one is listening. Patients are convinced they need to have antibiotic treatment, and somehow their time is wasted if they leave empty

Antimicrobial stewardship (AS) can be attained while fostering quality patient satisfaction. Interdisciplinary standards of practice exist to ensure evidence-based prescribing practices yet the pervasive use of antibiotics remains rampant globally. This is a multifaceted topic that impacts primary care prescribers, pharmacists, nurses, pharmaceutical companies, governing bodies, educational institutions, research teams, and the general population. This article will investigate how Canadian nurse practitioners (NPs) are in a prime position to influence an overdue revolution in AS, specifically for uncomplicated viral upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) of children ages two to ten in primary care.

Research has revealed how overprescribing antibiotic creates several adverse outcomes, including the development of multidrug resistant organisms, Clostridium difficile infection, and increased costs of health care (Myung et al., 2015). The Consumer Report (2015) raised concern for the overuse of antibiotics and how it leads to the loss of the ability to treat serious infections. Doctors,

A study performed by Alex Broom found that in multiple Australian hospitals contained a culture that perpetuated the ideology of using antibiotics in a reckless manner. In fact the study epitomized the global issue of misuse with the statistic of, “On any given day in Australia, approximately 40% of hospital in-patients will receive antibiotics with up to 50% of those deemed sub-optimal in current best practice terms” (Broom 81). Not only is this an important statistic for the argument that there is an issue, the journal discusses an insight as to why the misuse is happening in some medical quarters. Broom highlights the “social world” of hospitals that make doctors inclined to suppress immediate complications of an illness much more than looking to prevent a catastrophe that takes years to develop. Broom goes on to say, “We conclude that understanding the habitus of the hospital and the logics underpinning practice is a critical step toward developing governance practices that can respond to clinically ‘sub-opitmal’ antibiotic use” (Broom 81). The habitus, or a sort of social constitution among doctors, is one that includes a fear of undertreating as compared to over treating. The inconsideration for over treating patients could possibly be deemed inexplicably

frequencies of the overprescription of antibiotics and psychiatric medications used to treat ADD began to stand out immensely. While abuse of both drugs can result in the adolescent patient to physically endure multiple unnecessary and unwanted side effects, more importantly, antibiotic overuse is the main cause of antibiotic resistance, and improper use of psychiatric medications increase the risk of addiction greatly. Through further investigation, I began to question who was truly to blame for the vast misuse of these prescription drugs: the patient’s doctor or parent? While it is obvious that doctors are responsible for physically writing the prescriptions, the manipulative and irresponsible manner in which parents receive and handle the medications for their children raises the question of who is really to blame for the repercussions coming from the mishandling of these drugs. Although at first glance it may seem as if doctors are at fault for the outcomes coming from abuse of prescription drugs, I will argue that parents of the patients are far more responsible for its consequences due to the pressuring of doctors to write prescriptions for their children.

How would you encourage parents with children to approach a health professional about over prescribing antibiotics that could potential lead to resistance? How would you educate parents to recognize warning flags with over prescribing habits? You state that health education programs need to have the ability to enable and empower parents, how could empower lead to further complications associated with antibiotics? In your opinion what is a approach that could be taken to encourage health professional to reduce prescribing habits while still empowering parents to have guidance and ownership over their families health status?

The most common misconception of antibiotics is the drug being used against colds or flus which is a virus. While bacteria are living organisms that can be independent, virus are non-living organisms that require a host in order to survive. (Steckelberg 2011). According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where children are concerned, antibiotics are the most common cause of emergency department visits for adverse drug events. Antibiotics that are mistakenly used for viral infections will cause the infection to not be cured, infecting other people and the host will experience harmful side effects. The CDC has strongly recommended patients to not pursue antibiotics since doctors are more reluctant to prescribe antibiotics

If we do not change the way we misuse and overprescribe antibiotic medications, it will lead to an even greater public health problem in the future. It is important to further understand antibiotic effects on the human body through research and determine its effect on children across American. Because children are more susceptible to adverse health effects, it is crucial for health care physicians to receive the proper training and go through the proper channels when deciding to prescribe adolescents antibiotics. It is even more important for parents and guardians to be aware of how antibiotics can negatively affect their children and lead to serious health consequences.

Antibiotics are the key drugs for treatment of infections and are among the most commonly prescribed drugs in Pediatrics department. Their indiscriminate use increases the risk of bacterial drug resistance and thus has prompted the need to use antibiotics judiciously in pediatric practice [1]. The prescribing pattern deals with monitoring, evaluating and suggesting modifications in the prescribing pattern, so as to make patient care safe, effective and cost effective [2]. Antibiotics are commonly prescribed to treat various infectious conditions. Several studies reported that 50% to 85% of children receive antibiotics in developed and developing countries. Rational antibiotic prescription is very important to avoid multiple drug resistance,

In today’s society, people take antibiotics for cold or minor pain symptoms. What people do not understand is what damages antibiotics can do to an individual’s body. Often, people see advertisements of others taking medicine to treat pain symptoms, however, they do not realize that doctors do not recommend them. This topic is important because people need to be informed about the medicine they take. This may save people from buying expensive medicines that pharmacies sell, this will keep peoples immune systems stronger if they only take antibiotics for severe cases, and people will not get resistant to antibiotics as frequently. Thus, if antibiotics would be needed for important purposes, individuals may not need high doses

In this section of the project, we examined five random studies that were selected from CHINAL database. These studies provided information on the over-prescription of antibiotics in LTCF and the possible changes in practice that could be done to decrease antibiotic resistance. Most of these selected studies focused on providing providers and nurses with education to reinforce the education of antibiotic use in patients that present with ASB to reduce antibiotic resistance.

The overuse of antibiotics has been a problem for well over a decade. This misuse leads to many nonvisible problems arising within the human population. As the use of antibiotics increases, the number of antibiotic resistant bacteria also increases. When bacteria become resistant to an antibiotic, another antibiotic must be used to try and kill it and the cycle becomes vicious. Michael Martin, Sapna Thottathil, and Thomas Newman stated that antimicrobial resistance is, “an increasingly serious threat to global public health that requires action across all government sectors and society” (2409).