Have the public's expectations for antibiotics for acute uncomplicated respiratory tract infections changed since the H1N1 influenza pandemic? A qualitative interview and quantitative questionnaire study

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the effect of the H1N1 influenza pandemic on the public's expectations for a general practice consultation and antibiotic for acute respiratory illness. Design: Mixed methods. Participants: Qualitative interviews: 17 participants with acute respiratory tract infection (RTI) visiting English pharmacies. Face-to-face survey: about 1700 adults aged 15 years and older were recruited from households in England in January 2008, 2009 and 2011. Results: The qualitative data indicated that the general public had either forgotten about the 'swine flu' (H1N1 influenza) pandemic or it did not concern them as it had not affected them directly or affected their management of their current RTI illness. Between 2009 and 2011, we found that there was little or no change in people's expectations for antibiotics for runny nose, colds, sore throat or cough, but people's expectations for antibiotics for flu increased (26%e32%, p=0.004). Of the 1000 respondents in 2011 with an RTI in the previous 6 months, 13% reported that they took care of themselves without contacting their general practitioners and would not have done so before the pandemic, 9% reported that they had contacted their doctor's surgery and would not have done so before the pandemic and 0.6% stated that they had asked for antibiotics and would not have done so before the pandemic. In 2011, of 123 respondents with a young child (0-4 years) having an RTI in the previous 6 months, 7.4% requested antibiotics and would not have done so before the pandemic. Unprompted, 20% of respondents thought Tamiflu

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000674
Divisions: College of Health & Life Sciences
Additional Information: © 2012, Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Medicine(all)
Publication ISSN: 2044-6055
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2024 08:23
Date Deposited: 13 Nov 2018 11:03
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Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
https://bmjopen ... /2/e000674.info (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2012
Authors: McNulty, Cliodna
Joshi, Puja
Butler, Chris C.
Atkinson, Lou (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-1613-3791)
Nichols, Tom
Hogan, Angela
French, David

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