Physician consultation and antibiotic prescription in Swedish infants: population‐based comparison of group daycare and home care

Abstract

Daycare infants have more infectious episodes, see a physician more often, and are prescribed antibiotics more often than home care infants. To compare physician consultations and antibiotic prescription in daycare children and home care children taking number of symptom days, sociodemographic factors, concern about infectious illness and antibiotic knowledge into account. For a cohort of Swedish 18-month-old children all infectious symptoms, physician consultation and antibiotic prescriptions were registered during 1 month. 561 infants with daycare outside the home and 278 with daycare at home were included. Of the daycare infants, 23.2% saw a physician and 11.4% were prescribed antibiotics, as compared with 10.8% physician consultations and 5.0% antibiotic prescription for the home care infants. For daycare infants the crude odds ratio for physician consultation were 2.49 (1.63-3.82) and for antibiotic prescription 2.43 (1.34-4.41) compared with home care infants. However, these differences were no longer statistically significant when background data, concern about infectious illness and reported symptoms were taken into account. When background data, concern about infectious illness and reported infectious symptoms were taken into account daycare infants saw a physician and was prescribed antibiotics in the same way as home care infants.