Best Assessment of Sore Throat and Antibiotic Prescribing

Launched by VASTRA GOTALAND REGION · Oct 27, 2023

Keywords

ClinConnect Summary

This clinical trial is looking at a new way to help people with sore throats, specifically to see if changing how patients are treated can lead to fewer unnecessary prescriptions for antibiotics. The goal is to find out if having pharmacists assess patients instead of doctors can help manage sore throats effectively while reducing the use of antibiotics, which are sometimes over-prescribed.

To participate in this study, you need to be at least 6 years old and fluent in Swedish. You should be visiting a primary healthcare center or pharmacy because you have a sore throat as your main concern. If you're a parent or guardian of a child, you can also be involved, provided you can give your consent. If you have a more serious illness or are tested positive for COVID-19, you won’t be able to join. If you decide to take part, you will be asked to sign a form to show that you understand the study and agree to participate. This study is currently recruiting participants, and your involvement could help improve how sore throats are treated in the future!

Gender

ALL

Eligibility criteria

• Inclusion Criteria:
• • The patient is contacting/attending PHC centre or Pharmacy presenting with a sore throat as the main complaint.
• • Male or female, aged ≥6 years.
• • Fluent in Swedish (reading, writing, conversational) (applicable to caregivers/parents/guardians in case of children).
• • Mental state such that he or she can understand and give informed consent to participation in the study by signing the Information and Consent Form.
• • Provision of signed and dated Informed Consent Form.
• Exclusion Criteria:
• • The illness episode is classified as potentially complicated or potentially critically ill
• • Presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus in a patient first appearing at the PHC in a cluster where the assessment is supposed to be done by the pharmacists. The patient will not be sent to the pharmacist in case of presence of SARS-CoV-2-virus.
• • Patient request to be withdrawn from the study.