Nearly half of family doctors admit to prescribing antibiotics purely to get pushy patients out of their surgeries, it is revealed today.
The most frank admission yet that GPs are doling out prescriptions to “get the patients off our backs” will add to mounting concern that doctors are helping to fuel the rise of superbugs.
A report indicates that older doctors are markedly more likely to say that they would offer antibiotics, despite knowing that the drugs would be useless — a sign that repeated messages about responsible prescribing are still not getting through.
The survey of more than 1,000 GPs found that more than a quarter admitted that they provided antibiotics to patients unlikely to benefit from the drugs “several times a week” —