Overuse of Antibiotics: Who is to Blame? A Qualitative Study

The irrational use of antibiotics seriously threatens global health. Clinicians undoubtedly play an essential role in consuming antibiotics in hospitals and communities, and their attitudes may help the health system’s optimal treatment of antibiotics. In this study, we reported clinicians’ experiences with antibiotics used in Isfahan, Iran.

In a qualitative study conducted from October 2020 to March 2021, the experiences of 13 clinicians with different clinical specialties were collected through one‑to‑one interviews. Participants were selected through purposive sampling until data saturation; data collection was conducted through semi‑structured interviews. Conventional content analysis was used to analyze the transcribed interviews. The main category was recognized and subcategorized and coded by three researchers.

Eight women and five men with a mean work experience of 12.54 ± 10.047 years participated in the study. All of them worried about the overuse of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance. Clinicians believe that the antimicrobial stewardship committee is not active in our country. Laboratory challenges, healthcare providers, the poor performance of the health system, and marketing and business were the main categories of the study. Subcategrories of main categories included inefficiency in the function of laboratories, harmful profit, challenges in medical education, ups and downs of disease treatment, the unacceptable performance of hospitals, failure to upgrade the health system, threats and opportunities, and jobbery.

The participants of this study believed that excessive use of antibiotics is a serious challenge in our country. Physicians were concerned about antibiotic resistance and believed that the pattern of antibiotic resistance was not routinely reported. Therefore, in our region, we should make more efforts to collect data in this field and provide this information to physicians. Also, this study confirmed many obstacles to implementing the antimicrobial stewardship program, and the infrastructure needs strengthening. There is also a need for cultural changes and the views of physicians.