Patterns and Trends of Antibiotic Prescribing in Primary Care: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

Abstract

A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted to clarify the trends of antibiotic prescriptive practice in primary care and determinants of inappropriate use by primary care physicians in the Multan district. Simple random sampling was applied to recruit a total of 270 physicians in government health centers, private clinics, and community health centers. The data was collected using a structured, self-administered questionnaire, and where prescription records were available, they were reviewed. Most of them were males (59.3%), and their age was 30–39 years with 5–10 years of clinical practice, and 40.7 percent of consultations were carried out in telemedicine. Descriptive analysis depicted that the mean number of antibiotic prescriptions was 18.25 per week and the inappropriate prescribing rate was 42.36%. The proportion of all prescriptions that constituted broad-spectrum antibiotics was 68 percent. The chi-square test revealed that the age of patients and the type of antibiotic prescribed had a significant relationship (p = 0.021). An independent sample t-test revealed that less experienced physicians exhibited worse appreciation of appropriate prescription (p = 0.034). The key predictors of irrational prescribing were also identified as the physician's experience, patient pressure, and telemedicine use with the help of binary logistic regression. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 27.0. These findings support the relevance of particular antimicrobial stewardship measures and lifelong medical education in primary care. Improving prescription audits, distribution of guidelines, and clinical decision-support systems can also promote reasonable use of antibiotics.