There are millions of nursing home patients in the United States. So many times when a nurse calls a physician regarding a patients cold symptoms or slightly elevated temperature, a doctor gives an order for an antibiotic to treat these symptoms, and usually a nurse is calling the physician to request a cough syrup, or to just inform the doctor of the patients condition. But why do the doctors order antibiotics so frequently over the phone, just because nurses have to inform them of changes in a patients condition? And if the nurses did not report these changes, which are common in the elderly, and a patient had a serious life threatening condition, the nurse would be neglecting the patient.

It is no wonder that in a few weeks, we are checking these patients for Clostridium Difficile Infection. Antibiotic sickness is at an all time high. If you take your infant to the pediatrician, because of cold symptoms, they will usually tell you it is a virus, and they are usually right, your child will probably fight the virus and improve. But, in the elderly, it is unusual for a physician to let the elderly patient fight off the virus on their own, this may be due to the fact that the physician is unable to see the patient, or the families are insisting on antibiotic treatment.

We need serious change here, because your child may need the antibiotic that is so frequently over prescribed by these doctors, for these common colds in the elderly population. By the time your child needs this frivolously prescribed antibiotic for an ear infection or a life threatening infection to save his or her life, the bacteria your child has may be resistant to this particular antibiotic because of overuse of this medicine. If they would order a chest x-ray or a urine culture first, or whatever testing would be indicated according to the symptoms, that would be a start in the war against over prescribing antibiotics. We already have a problem with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridium Difficile Infection and Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus, what is next? Serious guidelines for prescribing antibiotics must be enforced.