This article from this month's JABFP reminds us that oversee of antibiotics remains a terrible problem in primary care, and family medicine especially. The rate of antibiotic prescription for URIs decreased from 52.1% in 1997 to 41.5% in 1999:
Conclusions: Despite a downward trend in antibiotic prescribing over the years, over-prescription of antibiotics for upper respiratory infections persists. General internal medicine physicians are less likely than general/family physicians to prescribe antibiotics, but this gap seems to be narrowing. Specific interventions must be designed to address these disparities.
Family physicians prescribed antibiotics 42.9% of the time for URI .. while Internists did so 36.2% of the time. Neither of these numbers is even approaching a reasonable goal (0%) ... I think that it's obvious that family physicians need to be better educated on this perils of over-prescribing antibiotics and given the tools to treat patients appropriately. Of course, the CDC has some great educational tools .. but many states are working on this as well ... and the google directory on antibiotic resistance is a good place to start looking for more information on this important topic.
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