Patients shouldn’t ask for antibiotics for colds
With the heightened worry about the lack of flu vaccine this season, many may be forgiven for mistaking those hallmarks of the common cold with something more serious.
But national health statistics show there’s a far more likely danger that anxious patients with nothing more than the common cold will show up at their doctor’s office, demanding an unnecessary prescription for antibiotics.
Particularly in the last decade, nearly every type of bacteria has become increasingly resilient against antibiotic treatment.
Antibiotics are not an effective treatment for viruses such as those that cause the common cold or influenza. Ignorance of that fact, has contributed to an alarming growth of antibiotic resistance.
The problem is particularly acute in Tennessee, where antibiotic resistance rates are now among the highest in the nation.
According to a report by state epidemiologist Allen Craig, in some areas of the state people can no longer use penicillin to treat ear infections, pneumonia and other serious infections because their illness is stronger than the antibiotic.
Many physicians complain that patients routinely expect prescriptions when they’re sick, regardless of whether there is any real rationale for dispensing them. It is undoubtedly true that many patients, particularly parents with sick children, often pressure doctors to prescribe unnecessarily. Doctors shouldn’t succumb to such pressure, but they want to please their patients. Still other patients routinely engage in something called doctor shopping, sometimes picking up multiple prescriptions from different doctors for the same diagnosis.