Overuse In Nursing

The medication we choose today may be what makes us lose tomorrow. Becoming drug resistant isn’t something the average person does on purpose. Often no one knows that they are harming their bodies by following a doctor’s order. It can happen to anyone that feels they are sick often and make multiple trips to the doctor each year. An estimated 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths occur each year in the United States due to antibiotic-resistant infections. Overuse and misuse of antibiotics are the main drivers of resistance (CDC). In the field of nursing this is an issue you could encounter often. Once a patient is prescribed an antibiotic and they finish their dose with no change in symptoms you will quickly detect that there is a problem, The conversation surrounding drug resistance is mostly based on talk of what doctors and other medical professionals like to call ‘Superbugs’ these are strains of bacterial infections that have become resistant to multiple types of antibiotics. Antibiotics are prescribed in order to destroy or slow down the growth of …show more content…
Misuse can be understood in this context of this article as overuse, misprescribed, or underutilized. Overuse is described as a person taking the same or similar antibiotics multiple times within small windows of time. Misprescription is a mistake by the physician is determining diagnosis or a prescription of unnecessary antibiotics in hopes of preventing further spread of the infection. Lastly, but most commonly found amongst the average person is underutilization. Underutilizing antibiotics is something even I myself am guilty of. This is seen most frequently when someone has begun to feel as if they are back to normal and no longer need to follow their course of treatment; however, it needs to be known that this only further compromises your immune system rather than aiding in