Variables, such as insurance type, clinic type, and education level were predictors of whether patients reporting that antibiotics would help common conditions such as sore throat.

Future stewardship interventions to reduce inappropriate patient antibiotic expectations should (1) inform patients of the symptoms/illnesses that antibiotics treat and (2) emphasize the individual harms/risks (or harms/risks to others close to an individual) of antibiotics, study authors wrote.

The study was led by Lindsey A. Laytner, PhD, MPH, of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and was published online in the Annals of Family Medicine. The study was supported by grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the US Department of Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Service.

The study may not be fully generalizable to patients in less diverse areas of the United States. Public clinic patients may be more psychosocially and medically complex, affecting their antibiotic expectations. A social desirability response bias may have occurred due to the neutral phrasing of questions. Patient antibiotic expectations may have been impacted by unforeseen contextual changes associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Various authors disclosed receiving grants from the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, Genentech, VA Health Services Research & Development, and the Texas Academy of Family Physicians, among others.