Delayed Prescription: Getting Just The Antibiotics You Really Need

Overuse of antibiotics creates antibiotic-infections that eventually make them useless. But people sometimes don't have the time off work to stay at home and see if they get better or the money to pay for laboratory tests and repeated doctor visits and they want their antibiotics now. Delayed prescriptions are one way of dealing with the need for possible need for antibiotics when testing isn't practical.

What Is a Delayed Prescription?

Delayed prescriptions, or delayed prescribing, are the practice of giving the patient a postdated prescription for an antibiotic to be filled 3 to 7 days after an office visit if symptoms have not improved.

A study published in Cochrane Reviews found that this is the only method of offering patients prescriptions for antibiotics that eliminates the cost of additional office visits while avoiding the creating of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.

Only about half of doctors surveyed, however, offer delayed prescriptions, and fewer than one-quarter of patients surveyed by WebMD and Medscape reported they had ever received a delayed prescription.

And What Do Patients Do with Delayed Prescriptions?

While delayed prescribing is the best way of dealing with the need to treat without running labs to identify the bacterium causing the infection, it is not a perfect system. The WebMD-Medscape survey found that of the patients surveyed:

• 2.0% filled the prescription immediately and took it against doctor's orders.
• 2.8% weren't sure what they did with delayed prescriptions.
• 9.7% filled the prescription immediately "just in case."
• 11.7% filled the prescription for the next time they got sick, so they would not have to go to the doctor's office at all, or so they could give the prescription to a friend or family member.
• 36.8% generally did not fill the prescription and just
• 36.8% filled them on the date indicated.

What More Could You Expect from Your Doctor?

If your doctor accommodates your financial restraints by offering you a delayed prescription, it is still a good idea to ask if other patients have run into problems with the antibiotic you are taking. Make sure that you take the entire prescription if you start it. What you do not want to to do is to kill some of the bacteria that are making you sick only to have the "meanest" bacteria in your body to spring into action when you stop taking your medicine too soon.

It also helps to know that sometimes an antibiotic just is not going to make you better.

See Also: Persistent Bacterial Infections And Resistance To Antibiotics

All the antibiotic will do is to kill the probiotic, friendly bacteria your body needs for making vitamins, for regulating your mood and your immune system, and regulating your digestive tract. Don't take antibiotics you don't need, and always take the full course of antibiotics you do need.