Missed a dose of antibiotics - what now?

[Anna_Aus]

I posted this in the paediatric forum but I dont think theres many people on there at the moment so thought I'd give it a shot here.

Hi,

I've just got a quick question. My daughter is 20 months old and on antibiotics three times a day, but this morning I completely forgot to give it to her. I've been in a zombie like state all day after only getting 3hrs sleep.

She had first dose at 11am, second dose at 4pm, now it's 5:30 and shes about to have dinner (usually I'd give her a dose with dinner) so should I give the third one now? She will have to go to bed in an hour so I could give it just before bed, or should I just skip it altogether????

I'm just not sure whether its ok to basically give her 2 within a couple of hrs???

Thanks in advance for any help!

[gwenith, BSN, RN]

1) What antibiotic is it? and 2) usually just give it a little later.

[Anna_Aus]

I ended up putting her to bed because she was SO grumpy I couldn't bare it any longer. I figured if last night was anything to go by we'll be up most of the night anyway so I can give it to her when she wakes up.

It's amoxil...I'm actually kinda disappointed the dr put her on it, I think sometimes they just give antibiotics because they dont know what else to do. But I'm not a dr and really have no idea so I didn't feel like I could argue with him and say he didn't know what he was doing!!!!!!

But the problem is she's had three ear infections in the last couple of months and now its her throat, and I'm worried she's going to build up more resistance to antibiotics than anything else.

[gwenith, BSN, RN]

You are right to worry about too many antibiotics since they are increasingly being implicated in the rise of incidence of Asthma however I have seen some scarey outcomes from untreated "sore throats" so it is hard to be unbiased.

[camay1221_RN]

I would say just give it to her at bedtime and not worry about the third dose tonight.

The pediatricians I work with only give amoxicillin twice a day instead of three times. I know this is dose dependent, but as long as you don't consistently miss doses, she will be just fine missing the one.