How do community practitioners decide whether to prescribe antibiotics for acute respiratory tract infections?
GROUND: Overuse of antibiotics in the treatment of acute respiratory tract infection (ARI) contributes to the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant infections. OBJECTIVE: To identify factors that influence community practitioners to prescribe antibiotics and examine how they differ from the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guideline for treatment of ARI. DESIGN: Paper case vignette study using a fractional factorial design. PARTICIPANTS: One hundred one community practitioners and eight faculty members. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: We asked community practitioners to estimate how likely they would be to prescribe antibiotics in each of 20 cases of ARI and then used multiple regression to infer the importance weights of each of nine clinical findings. We then compared practitioners’ weights with those of a panel of eight faculty physicians who evaluated the cases following the CDC guidelines rather than their own judgments. MAIN RESULTS: Practitioners pres
