Again there are clear changes in attitudes with students less likely to think that the evidence supports antibiotic prescriptions for AOM after using the site. Would you expect an antibiotic for AOM?
Knowing what the evidence suggests and what we therefore expect in our own situation are not always the same. This graph shows that there were decreased expectations of antibiotics for AOM if students or their families were affected themselves.
We can see from the above graphs that there were significant changes in attitudes to antibiotic prescribing in those students who looked at the website between completing the two questionnaires. This supports the results from the studies in the Science Museum and Nottingham City Hospital suggesting that the website does influence user knowledge and attitudes. The main difference with this group was the high standard of general knowledge with most students correctly answering the true/false questions. Knowledge and attitudes to antibiotic use in AOM was not as high prior to using the site, but this is to be expected as many students will not have encountered this infection in a clinical setting as yet, so be unaware of the difficulty surrounding decisions about antibiotic prescribing. Our thanks to Dr Brian Angus and his 4th year medical students at Oxford University for their invitation and co-operation in this study.
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