Antibiotic prescribing

Last month, the research round-up provided you with an overview of articles on prescribing in allergic rhinitis. This month, we look at three articles and examine a range of prescribing practices around antibiotics. The first is a systematic review that looks at the knowledge and attitudes of health professionals around the prescribing of antibiotics for the treatment of urinary tract infections. In the second article, another systematic review, we see how early career general practitioners are prescribing antibiotics for acute infections. Finally, our third article looks at prescribing patterns in respiratory tract infections..

This article, published in the British Journal of Health Psychology, was a systematic review to garner health professionals' knowledge and attitudes of antibiotic prescribing for urinary tract infections.

They start by acknowledging that much research has shown knowledge and attitude factors have been identified as influencing prescribing behaviour. This review was aimed at building information around antibiotic prescribing in urinary tract infections and was conducted using robust and expected methodology and searching appropriate databases. The search strategy was restricted to March 2021 and September 2022 with key search terms used that replicated previous searches. Appropriate inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to the search and the PICO framework identified the population as healthcare professionals, an instrument as a written assessment with the outcome as knowledge and attitudes about antibiotic prescribing and comparison studies were included. After all quality and screening was carried out, seven articles met the criteria for inclusion.