To add to this thread, my sister had to travel to loughborough yesterday (saturday) to see an out of hours GP, as after waiting 4 hours in the royal infirmary only for the receptionist to tell everyone there is no doctors available.
What a mess.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rowcoy
Making it possible to get some drugs without a prescription is looked at regularly and is generally based on the perceived benefit of making some medicines easier to get for example it is now possible to get PPI medication as an OTC medication without a prescription. Antibiotics are perhaps a bad example of a medicine that could be provided in this way as they are already possibly the most over subscribed class of medication. If you look at countries that do have a more relaxed attitude towards provision of antibiotics (Greece springs to mind) the associated incidence and prevalence of resistant infections is massively higher.
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Thats why I said just one pack of antibiotics per year enough for a 5 day run.
Whilst it may be easy to say they over subscribed its worth bearing in mind some people really over estimate the ability of the immune system to fight infections, before antibiotics were invented people died at a much younger age from minor ailments that could get out of control. So something that starts of as trivial without treatment can become serious. This risk that you talk about can be mitigated by only supplying one type of antibiotics this way, e.g. so most of the antibiotics remain prescription only.
I have never been refused antibiotics whenever I have suggested it either to a dentist or GP, so the system as far as I am concerned has never blocked the use of antibiotics but only delayed it.
This is of course without taking into consideration like people been absent from work etc. whilst waiting to see a doctor.