Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Pediatrics, Levine Children's Hospital at Atrium Health, Charlotte, North Carolina, United States of America.
Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2023 Feb 9;18(2):e0281660. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281660. eCollection 2023.
Antibiotics are frequently prescribed for children in the outpatient setting. Although sometimes necessary, antibiotic use is associated with important downstream effects including the development of antimicrobial resistance among human and environmental microorganisms. Current outpatient stewardship efforts focus on guiding appropriate antibiotic prescribing practices among providers, but little is known about parents' understanding of antibiotics and appropriate disposal of leftover antibiotics. To help bridge this gap, we conducted a qualitative study to assess parental understanding of their children's antibiotics, their adherence to antibiotic instructions, and their disposal practices. We conducted a semi-structured interview with parents of 13 children diagnosed with acute respiratory illnesses and prescribed antibiotics in an urban outpatient clinic. We found that parents had limited understanding of how antibiotics work. Although they received instructions about antibiotic use during the healthcare visit, adherence to the prescription and appropriate disposal of antibiotics was suboptimal. Limited baseline understanding of antibiotics, their prior experiences with antibiotics, perceptions about their social networks' antibiotic use, and information provided to them by healthcare providers may influence these behaviors. Our findings can inform educational efforts of outpatient stewardship programs to help optimize parental understanding of how to use and dispose of their children's antibiotics.
抗生素经常在门诊环境下开给儿童使用。尽管有时是必要的，但抗生素的使用与重要的下游影响有关，包括人类和环境微生物中抗菌药物耐药性的发展。目前的门诊管理措施侧重于指导提供者适当的抗生素处方实践，但对于父母对抗生素的理解以及剩余抗生素的适当处理知之甚少。为了帮助弥合这一差距，我们进行了一项定性研究，以评估父母对孩子抗生素的理解、他们对抗生素医嘱的遵守情况以及他们的处理做法。我们对在城市门诊诊所诊断出患有急性呼吸道疾病并开了抗生素的 13 名儿童的父母进行了半结构化访谈。我们发现，父母对抗生素的作用机制了解有限。尽管他们在就诊期间接受了有关抗生素使用的指导，但对处方的遵守和抗生素的适当处理并不理想。对抗生素的基本了解有限、他们以前使用抗生素的经验、对社交网络中抗生素使用的看法以及医疗保健提供者提供给他们的信息，可能会影响这些行为。我们的研究结果可以为门诊管理计划的教育工作提供信息，以帮助优化父母对如何使用和处理孩子抗生素的理解。
