Yonder: a diverse selection of primary care relevant research stories from beyond the mainstream biomedical literature

Duty lists, especially during winter, can be a seemingly endless stream of respiratory tract infections (RTIs). For patients who re-present, we might be asked or feel the need to prescribe a second or even third course of antibiotics. These within-episode repeat prescriptions were the focus of this study,1 which found that almost 20% of lower RTIs and 10% of upper RTIs treated with antibiotics had at least one more course of antibiotics prescribed. The second course was prescribed a median of 10 days after the first and was the same antibiotic class in almost half of cases. Frequent visits to the GP with RTI and having previously had multiple courses of antibiotics …