Maternal Practices Regarding Oral Antibiotics Administration

Aim: This study was to evaluate the maternal practices regarding oral antibiotics administration.

Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study design was utilized. A convenient sample of one hundred mothers who were visiting the general and chest out-patient clinics and fulfilling the study criteria was enrolled. One structured interview questionnaire was designed specifically for this study after a thorough review of the literature and previous researches. It included two parts: Personal characteristics of the mothers and their practices in administering oral antibiotics for their young children.

Results: The study results found that the mean age of mothers was 27.3± 4.6 years, 26.00% were illiterate and 78.00% were housewives. Also, showed that 70.0% of mothers had poor scores regarding antibiotics administration. Likewise, 66% of the studied mothers didn't complete the full course of antibiotics as prescribed regardless of the child's improvements. Too, 42% of mothers were using the teaspoon followed by 30.0% using syringe to measure antibiotic doses. Moreover, 78% were giving the previously prescribed antibiotics without prescription. Furthermore, there was a highly statistically positive correlation found as regard mothers' education and their total score of practices (r=0.29, P=0.003). Also, statistically positive correlations were found between mothers' age, occupation, and residence and their total score of knowledge (r= 0.16, 0.25, 0.18, P=0.09, 0.01 and 0.008) respectively.

Conclusions: The majority of mothers had poor scores regarding the total score of oral antibiotics practices. Too, the errors during antibiotics administration were evident by mothers. So, the ministry of health should set a policy to limit un-prescribed antibiotics purchasing from pharmacy shops.