Prescribing Practices and Public Awareness of Oral Antibiotics: A Community Based Study

Abstract

This cross sectional study examined the public knowledge and awareness about oral antibiotics and prescribing practices of oral antibiotics by the healthcare provider.

This study is a community based cross-sectional study where a survey conducted on community populations in Bangalore for a period of six month. Where we used a pre-verified questionnaire form to assess the public knowledge, awareness about oral antibiotics and the prescribing practices of antibiotics by the healthcare providers. This survey has been conducted on a population with 422 participants where 401 general public and 21 healthcare providers included.

The majority of participants (376) almost 93.8% of the total participants responded that they have taken oral antibiotics. 76.1% (305) participants from the total study population have been states that they knows about the antibiotics, and 296 participants almost 73.8% of the total study population states that they aware about the usage of antibiotics. The participants those who states that they know about the antibiotics, among them 79 (25.9%) individuals states that the uses of antibiotics should stop once you feel better, even some of the doses are left according to prescription, whereas 160(52.5%) participants disagreed with this statement.

Through this study we can conclude that the Knowledge about the oral antibiotics uses among the population is found to be less which is required for the better quality of life. The incidences of self medication of antibiotics are more in rural area whereas in urban area majority of people takes consultations of prescriber before taking oral antibiotics.