Behavior, attitudes and knowledge about antibiotic usage among residents of Changhua, Taiwan

Changhua Chen¹, Yu-Min Chen², Kai-Lin Hwang³, Su-Jan Lin⁴, Chih-Chien Yang⁵, Ren-Wen Tsay¹, Chun-Eng Liu¹, Tzuu-Guang Young^1
1Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, ²Department of Pharmacy, and ³Department of Medical Education and Research, Changhua Christian Hospital, Changhua; ⁴Department of Special Education, College of Education, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Kaohsiung; and ⁵The Graduate School of Educational Measurement & Statistics, National Taichung Teachers College, Taichung, Taiwan

Received: January 13, 2004 Revised: March 25, 2004 Accepted: April 13, 2004

Corresponding author: Dr. Su-Jan Lin, Ph.D., Department of Special Education, College of Education, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. E-mail:

This study surveyed the behavior, attitudes, and knowledge about antibiotic usage among residents of Changhua County, Taiwan. A questionnaire designed to evaluate general knowledge and attitudes towards antibiotic usage was administered to a total of 1024 adults. The male-to-female ratio was 0.75. All of the 1024 adults were aware of the term "antibiotics". Only 39.2% of subjects had knowledge about basic antibiotic terminology, 69.7% expected that physicians should educate people about antibiotics. There were 7 main findings of this study: (1) 52.7% of subjects considered that physicians advice about the need for compliance was poor; (2) 15.3% of subjects always requested an antibiotics prescription when they suffered from flu-like symptoms; (3) 49.8% failed to comply with prescribed antibiotic regimens; (4) 53.1% of subjects were not aware that antibiotic syrup should be stored in the refrigerator; (5) 27.1% of subjects lacked knowledge about how to deal with the misuse of antibiotics; (6) 9.3% of pregnant and breast-feeding subjects did not have adequate knowledge of the safety of using antibiotics during pregnancy; and (7) 30% of subjects did not know how to obtain information about antibiotic usage. Residents of Changhua County had inadequate or incorrect knowledge about antibiotic usage. The findings of this study imply the need for programs to promote greater education about antibiotics usage in the general population of Taiwan.

Key words: Anti-infective agents, attitude, cognition, health care surveys, questionnaires

J Microbiol Immunol Infect 2005;38:53-59.