You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 26, Issue 3
  • Maternal emotions increase the desire for antibiotic use and pressure on health professionals to prescribe antibiotics to their infants

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Commentary
Child health
Maternal emotions increase the desire for antibiotic use and pressure on health professionals to prescribe antibiotics to their infants
  1. Francisco Dionisio1,2,3,
  2. Marina Fuertes4,5
  1. 1 Plant Biology Department, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal
  2. 2 Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, CHANGE—Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Lisbon, Portugal
  3. 3 Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, cE3c—Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Lisbon, Portugal
  4. 4 Centro de Psicologia da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal
  5. 5 Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa Escola Superior de Educação, Lisboa, Portugal
  1. Correspondence to Dr Francisco Dionisio, Plant Biology Department, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisboa, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal; dionisio{at}fc.ul.pt; Dr Marina Fuertes, Centro de Psicologia da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal; marinaf{at}eselx.ipl.pt

https://doi.org/10.1136/ebnurs-2022-103616

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Commentary on: Bosley H, Henshall C, Appleton JV, Jackson D. Understanding antibiotic-seeking behaviour: A qualitative case study of mothers of children aged 5 and under. J Adv Nurs. 2022 Nov;78(11):3772–3781. doi: 10.1111/jan.15356. Epub 2022 Jul 21.

    Implications for practice and research

    • Prescribing nurses and doctors must be aware of the symbolic power of antibiotics as wonder drugs, impacting their seeking behaviour.

    • They also must provide reassuring medications alternatives to antibiotics.

    Context

    Antibiotic use selects for antibiotic resistance, which is causing a burden worldwide. In 2019, nearly 5 million people died due to causes associated with antibiotic resistance.1 Therefore, measures to avoid antibiotic overprescription are urgent. There is a growing body of evidence linking antibiotic prescription to psychological characteristics of health workers, patients and, in the case of paediatrics appointments, mothers …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.