The American Psychological Association published two studies finding physicians are more prone to prescribe antibiotics if a patient has high expectations, according to News-Medical Lifesciences.
In one study, researchers sent a questionnaire to 436 physicians in the United Kingdom. The questionnaire presented an instance where a mother was with her daughter with typical ear infection symptoms. In some scenarios, the mother had higher expectations for the provider to prescribe antibiotics.
They ordered the questions differently throughout the questionnaire. Therefore, some physicians first answered the question concerning bacterial probability and then the question on whether they would prescribe the antibiotic based on the patient's mother's expectations, and vice versa.
The study found physicians who read the scenario where the patient's mother had high expectations wrote a prescription, regardless of the questions' order. These providers were not any more likely than physicians whose patients had low expectations to perceive the infection as bacterial, which the researchers noted was promising. The researchers said, "This was a somewhat reassuring finding as we thought that the effect of non-clinical factors might have been even more serious than we had imagined."
The second study paralleled the first study in presenting physicians with scenarios of a patient who had low or high expectations. Providers answered the questionnaire saying if they would prescribe antibiotics to an adult patient with ear infection symptoms who either had high or low expectations of receiving antibiotics.
The study found 52 percent of physicians prescribed antibiotics and were more likely to prescribe them if the patient had high expectations. The study also found no difference between the physicians' reports of bacterial likelihood and antibiotic prescribing.
Researchers stated, "We do not intend our study to criticize physicians and how they prescribe antibiotics, "Rather, we want to point out that the over prescribing of antibiotics is a serious systemic issue: we should all work together- from patients having more realistic expectations about antibiotic effectiveness to physicians managing patients' expectations when contradicting clinical guidelines - to tackle its multiple facets."
