Please Help With Antibiotic Teaching

[belabelisa]

A good indication to me of my teaching skills on a particular subject is how well I am able to explain it to my 75 year old dad. I love him dearly but he is completely clueless when it comes to all things medical.

So tonight my dad told me that he hasn't been feeling well and was thinking about taking an antibiotic that he had leftover from about a year ago. When I questioned him, he defended this idea of his by saying, "I was ONLY going to take one pill... you know, just to give my immune systen a boost."

Of course this is a bad idea, I know that. I also know, for the most part, why it's a bad idea. I just found it VERY hard to explain to my dad.

Any ideas about how I can simplify this? It's much harder to explain that I thought it would be!

~Thanks~

:flowersfo

[santhony44, MSN, RN, NP]

When you take less than a full course of antibiotics, they kill off the weak germs and leave the stronger ones alive. The stronger ones might make you sicker.

That's more or less what I tell patients.

[randomramblings]

I tell patients that if you don't take all of your antibiotics, it doesn't kill all the bacteria. The ones who survive are stronger and could make you sick again, only this time they're resistant to the antibiotic so they're harder to kill. The same thing happens if you take "leftover" antibiotics [which we all know they shouldn't have anyway] or insist on antibiotics for viral infections.

Then I tell them that that's why we have superbugs like the guy with TB or things like MRSA. Most patients at least pay lip service to the fact that they understand when I put it that way.

[pagandeva2000, LPN]

Also tell him that there is no reason to take an antibiotic each time we get sick, because it may build resistance to the more common antibiotics, and by the time something serious rolls around, you have to take the stronger stuff that makes you sicker, and there will be less to choose from, because resistance was built up for the more common, less expensive ones.

I had a similar issue with my mother in law. A few years ago (while I was in nursing school), both, my husband and I got sick with the flu and we were both laying in bed sick as dogs. I had to miss my final in microbiology (coincidently) and he missed days of work. We both needed notes for obvious reasons. The doctor prescribed my husband an antibiotic and not me. I told the doctor that unless he suspects that my husband also has a bacterial infection, there was no reason for him to take any. We went with that and went home to heal. He must have told his mother the story, because she called me a few days later to 'tell me about myself'. She says that my husband should have been prescribed the medicine and it was not in my place to tell him not to take it. I started out trying to be as gentle as I can, but, then, I had to strongly advocate my case and say that as a nursing student who just completed a course along with lab work that focused on microbes, I know that I made the right decision.

My MIL is the type to run to the doctor from the 'old school' who will give antibiotics for a mole on the face. I told her that her doctor is wrong for doing this, and that by saying this to her as well as him is speaking to protect, not to harm them. She got very miffed, and it took a few days for her to calm down, and I called her back and told her that I understood that she has the best interest of her son, but so did I, and don't take it personal. I don't think she got it, still, but, she didn't interfere anymore.

[AmaurosisFugax]

And of course even for a bacterial infection an antibiotic may have no activity against that specific bacteria...& even if it once did, in a particular geographic region the bacteria may have gotten resistant to a once-effective antibiotic, from time to time CDC & IDSA advises on that (like quinolones & gonorrhea).

However I am wondering whether taking 1 antibiotic pill once in a blue moon will do that much harm; may even have a placebo effect, isn't it prolonged/overuse of antibiotics that select for resistant strains or produce pseudomembranous colitis or yeast infections & the like?