Don’t Be A Jerk; Stop Demanding Antibiotics!
If you haven’t read my informational post about what antibiotics are and are not, that would be a good thing to read before reading this post. Particularly the section on antibiotic resistance. Click here to read that post.
With that being said, let’s get right into it.
Antibiotic resistance is a real problem! Antibiotics are awesome, an incredibly useful tool in the medical world, and one of the major achievements of modern medicine. They help really sick people get better quickly. But they are not harmless, and they have limitations. Therefore, they must be used cautiously. Like a car driving through your garden, a good thing used inappropriately can be a bad thing. Antibiotics are no different. But often patients beg their doctors to practice medicine inappropriately or without caution. So I’m going to climb up on my soapbox for a few paragraphs; feel free to stick around.
The Problem
Sometimes you (the patient) fight us for antibiotics, regardless of the actual problem. I’m talking literal yelling, screaming, calling us terrible names, threatening us physically and legally, etc. In reality, the medical providers who refuse to prescribe antibiotics inappropriately (risk with no expected benefit) and push back against your hissy fit are most likely the better of us. You want to keep them around because they value your health higher than their own comfort and reputation. It’s the ones that just take your money and give you whatever you want that you need to keep your eye on.
I try to assume you get so angry at us because you don’t fully understand what antibiotics are and their dangers, as they’re often wrongly thought of as a “cure-all” or “safety net.” Therefore, you feel like I am rude and withholding good treatment from you. That anger is understood and fair, it is the reason for this post (and this post). However, I take issue when you are unwilling to listen and take the medical advice of the medical expert you came to. There is no secret motive or conspiracy behind our not wanting to give you antibiotics, nor are we jerks that don’t care about your suffering. We just want to see you get back on your feet as soon and safely as possible. Trust me, we don’t want you coming back again because you didn’t get better after the first visit; we hate that.
The Truth
Prescribing antibiotics inappropriately kills people. Yet patients continue to push us to do so, daily. I don’t enjoy being so blunt, but that’s what it has to come to. Don’t believe me? Walk the halls of any hospital floor and count the number of isolation stations you see (special carts with gowns, gloves, mask, etc.). These are to protect staff and visitors from contracting whatever it is that patient has, robbing them of any personal contact when they need us most. These isolation stations used to be uncommon, but are becoming increasingly more common due to resistant bacteria (think of a really smart mouse that has figured out all your traps). Patients with these resistant bacteria can be extremely sick without many treatment options due to previous inappropriate use of antibiotics, even if they didn’t personally misuse them.
Take it from me, you never really understand the drastic measures we’re having to take to fight resistant bacteria until you’re standing in an operating room with a “donor’s” poop and a common kitchen blender making a literal poop-smoothie. Why? Well, you’re about to inject that smoothie, with a syringe, into your patient’s rear end, hoping the normal “good” bacteria from the donor will kill the resistant “bad” bacteria that’s making the patient sick. All because there were no more antibiotics to try; the bacteria resisted every type.
Yes, that’s a thing. And in this specific example it was a husband (donor) and wife (patient); how romantic. 😍
The Solution
For heaven’s sake, trust the decades of education and experience of your medical providers, and stop fighting them. Please ask us if antibiotics would be helpful when you’re sick; they’re always worth considering. But if we say no, there’s a worthwhile reason, and we would love to explain it to you if you will listen. It’s fair to be upset if you don’t understand what antibiotics are, but now you’ve read this (and this), so you should know better than demand us to practice bad medicine. Stop it.
And yes, we actually listen to you, and we do hear you telling us that you never get better until you get antibiotics, don’t have time to be sick, were around someone that needed antibiotics, or have a deviated septum so you need antibiotics (as though a viral sinus infection is virtually impossible with a deviated septum). An important part of our jobs is to listen to you, hear you out, and see your side of things. We take what you say seriously because it’s important to us and informs our medical decisions. You may not feel like it, but we hear you voicing your concern and we actually do care and appreciate you looking to us when you’re vulnerable.
However, realize we have an obligation as medical experts to pursue what’s best for your health. Sometimes antibiotics are the correct and responsible answer, but sometimes they’re not. When what you want conflicts with what’s best for your health, we choose your health, even if that makes you hate us.
We’re On The Same Team
Ok, I’m stepping down from my soapbox. If you’re still here I really do appreciate you reading, and I hope that this post is at least somewhat helpful. My goal isn’t to rant to win an argument or get my way, but to express my concern for the daily abuse medical providers receive from patients demanding inappropriate antibiotics and the growing public health issues that have risen with increasing antibiotic resistant bacteria. We truly want what’s best for our patients and want to see our communities thrive. Hopefully that’s a train everyone can get on.
Learn more, stay humble.
