Adherence and utilization of short-term antibiotics: Randomized controlled study

Basima A Almomani; Bushra M Hijazi; Belal A Al-Husein; Muna Oqal; Lara M Al-Natour

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0291050

Adherence and utilization of short-term antibiotics: Randomized controlled study

PLoS One. 2023 Sep 5;18(9):e0291050. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0291050. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Basima A Almomani¹, Bushra M Hijazi¹, Belal A Al-Husein¹, Muna Oqal², Lara M Al-Natour³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Ar-Ramtha, Jordan.
² Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan.
³ Department of Pharmacology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan.

Abstract

Enhancing adherence to medication has the potential to improve clinical outcomes and decrease healthcare cost. The role of clinical pharmacist-led education on adherence to short-term antibiotic has never been investigated in Jordan. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention on antibiotic short-term adherence and to assess the antibiotic utilization pattern. A prospective, single blinded, randomized controlled study was conducted in a tertiary referral hospital in Jordan. Adult patients diagnosed with acute infection and prescribed a short-term antibiotic course (< 30 day) were included in the study. Recruited patients were randomly allocated into control and intervention groups. Pharmaceutical education about the correct use of antibiotic/s was provided to the intervention group. The results showed that penicillins were the most prescribed antibiotics (38.7%) followed by fluoroquinolones (23.9%) and cephalosporines (20.9%). Patients in the intervention group were more likely to be adherent to the prescribed antibiotics compared to control group (OR = 1.445, 95CI% = 1.029-2.030, p = 0.033). Employed patients, less frequent administration of antibiotic, and searching information related to the prescribed antibiotics were factors associated with better adherence to short-term antibiotic (p<0.05). The most common reasons for non-adherence were feeling better and forgetfulness to take medication. These findings highlighted that pharmacist-led educational intervention significantly enhance adherence to prescribed short-term antibiotics which is a major drive to control antibiotic resistance. Initiatives should be adopted to include patient education as a regular element in the medication dispensing process. Clinical trial registration: The trial is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (identifier: NCT05293977).

Copyright: © 2023 Almomani et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Randomized Controlled Trial
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Anti-Bacterial Agents*
Fluoroquinolones
Humans
Penicillins*
Prospective Studies
Research Design

Substances

Anti-Bacterial Agents
Penicillins
Fluoroquinolones

Associated data

ClinicalTrials.gov/NCT05293977

Grants and funding

Funded Study Basima Almomani (BA) received a grant (reference number 536/2019) from Deanship of Research at Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.