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Attitudes, beliefs and knowledge concerning antibiotic use and self‐medication: a comparative European study
Author(s) -
Grigoryan Larissa,
Burgerhof Johannes G. M.,
Degener John E.,
Deschepper Reginald,
Lundborg Cecilia Stålsby,
Monnet Dominique L.,
Scicluna Elizabeth A.,
Birkin Joan,
HaaijerRuskamp Flora M.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.023
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1099-1557
pISSN - 1053-8569
DOI - 10.1002/pds.1479
Subject(s) - medicine , situational ethics , resistance (ecology) , antibiotic resistance , antibiotics , confounding , czech , self medication , family medicine , environmental health , demography , social psychology , psychology , ecology , linguistics , philosophy , sociology , microbiology and biotechnology , biology
Purpose Although the relevance of cultural factors for antibiotic use has been recognized, few studies exist in Europe. We compared public attitudes, beliefs and knowledge concerning antibiotic use and self‐medication between 11 European countries. Methods In total, 1101 respondents were interviewed on their attitudes towards appropriateness of self‐medication with antibiotics and situational use of antibiotics, beliefs about antibiotics for minor ailments, knowledge about the effectiveness of antibiotics on viruses and bacteria and awareness about antibiotic resistance. To deal with the possible confounding effect of both use of self‐medication and education we performed stratified analyses, i.e. separate analyses for users and non‐users of self‐medication, and for respondents with high and low education. The differences between countries were considered relevant when regression coefficients were significant in all stratum‐specific analyses. Results Respondents from the UK, Malta, Italy, Czech Republic, Croatia, Israel and Lithuania had significantly less appropriate attitudes, beliefs or knowledge for at least one of the dimensions compared with Swedish respondents. The Dutch, Austrian and Belgian respondents did not differ from Swedish for any dimension. Conclusions The most pronounced differences were for awareness about resistance, followed by attitudes towards situational use of antibiotics. Awareness about antibiotic resistance was the lowest in countries with higher prevalence of resistance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.