Abstract

Objective: Inappropriate use of antibiotics can cause many problems. One of the reasons for the overuse of antibiotics is the desire of parents to use antibiotics depending on their wishes and previous experience. Parents’ choice on usage of antibiotics depends on their socioeconomic status, education levels, previous disease experience and knowledge of antibiotics. In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of antibiotic use of the parents of the patients who presented at the pediatric polyclinic.

Material and Methods: The study was conducted by face to face interview with 200 children’s parents. The parents were asked to respond to a questionnaire consisting of 26 questions, including sociodemographic characteristics and knowledge and attitudes about the use of antibiotics.

Results: There were 200 parents who participated in our study and 78% of them were mothers while 22% of them were fathers. 119 (59.5%) of the participants expressed that they took their child to the doctor when they were sick and 81 (40.5%) of them stated that they started self-medication (antibiotic, antipyretics, cough syrup). The rate of using drug before going to doctor was higher in mothers (42.9%) than in fathers (31.8%). The rate was also lower in the parent whose education period was higher than 8 years. While 4.5% of the participants used antibiotics without a doctor’s recommendation, 95.5% did not have extra antibiotics at home.

Conclusion: The low rate of antibiotic usage without doctor’s recommendation and the low rate of having antibiotics at home are positive results.

Keywords: Antibiotic, Child, Behavior, Parent

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Copyright and license

Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to cite

1.
Güngör A. Evaluation of Parents’ Attitudes and Behaviors Related to the Use of Antibiotics in Children. Turk J Pediatr Dis [Internet]. 2019 May 24 [cited 2025 Aug. 23];13(3):203-7. Available from: https://turkjpediatrdis.org/article/view/613