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Prescribing style and variation in antibiotic prescriptions for sore throat: cross-sectional study across six countries

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Primary Care, January 2015
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (86th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (77th percentile)

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16 X users
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67 Mendeley
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Title
Prescribing style and variation in antibiotic prescriptions for sore throat: cross-sectional study across six countries
Published in
BMC Primary Care, January 2015
DOI 10.1186/s12875-015-0224-y
Pubmed ID
Authors

Gloria Cordoba, Volkert Siersma, Beatriz Lopez-Valcarcel, Lars Bjerrum, Carl Llor, Rune Aabenhus, Marjukka Makela

Abstract

BackgroundVariation in prescription of antibiotics in primary care can indicate poor clinical practice that contributes to the increase of resistant strains. General Practitioners (GPs), as a professional group, are expected to have a fairly homogeneous prescribing style. In this paper, we describe variation in prescribing style within and across groups of GPs from six countries.MethodsCross-sectional study with the inclusion of 457 GPs and 6394 sore throat patients. We describe variation in prescribing antibiotics for sore throat patients across six countries and assess whether variation in ¿prescribing style¿ ¿ understood as a subjective tendency to prescribe ¿ has an important effect on variation in prescription of antibiotics by using the concept of prescribing style as a latent variable in a multivariable model. We report variation as a Median Odds Ratio (MOR) which is the transformation of the random effect variance onto an odds ratio; Thus, MOR¿=¿1 means similar odds or strict homogeneity between GPs¿ prescribing style, while a MOR higher than 1 denotes heterogeneity in prescribing style.ResultsIn all countries some GPs always prescribed antibiotics to all their patients, while other GPs never did. After adjusting for patient and GP characteristics, prescribing style in the group of GPs from Russia was about three times more heterogeneous than the prescribing style in the group of GPs from Denmark ¿ Median Odds Ratio ( 6.8, 95%CI 3.1;8.8 ) and ( 2.6, 95%CI 2.2;4.4 ) respectively.ConclusionPrescribing style is an important source of variation in prescription of antibiotics within and across countries, even after adjusting for patient and GP characteristics. Interventions aimed at influencing the prescribing style of GPs must encompass context-specific actions at the policy-making level alongside GP-targeted interventions to enable GPs to react more objectively to the external demands that are in place when making the decision of prescribing antibiotics or not.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 16 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 67 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Canada 1 1%
Unknown 66 99%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 16 24%
Student > Master 9 13%
Student > Ph. D. Student 8 12%
Student > Postgraduate 7 10%
Lecturer 3 4%
Other 10 15%
Unknown 14 21%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 28 42%
Social Sciences 5 7%
Psychology 3 4%
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science 2 3%
Nursing and Health Professions 2 3%
Other 7 10%
Unknown 20 30%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 10. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 18 May 2015.
All research outputs
#3,537,256
of 25,371,288 outputs
Outputs from BMC Primary Care
#477
of 2,359 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#48,422
of 361,607 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Primary Care
#8
of 35 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,371,288 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 86th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,359 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.7. This one has done well, scoring higher than 79% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 361,607 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 35 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 77% of its contemporaries.