Abstract

Policies intended to reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics have been promoted as a key to preventing antimicrobial resistance. However, reduction of antibiotic use in health care potentially involves tensions between health of the patient receiving care and the health of the (future) population. An analysis of general practitioners' talk about everyday medical practice in relation to respiratory tract infections shows how they manage to move between policy and patient interests through 'alignment work.' Alignment work is the discursive strategies used to manage risks and demands related to antibiotic resistance as well as patients receiving health care. Through alignment work conflicting demands and risks can be juggled, and antibiotic prescribing becomes discursively doable. Alignment work is not solely a matter of making conflicting demands and risks coherent, but might also involve leaving tensions and ambiguities intact. It enables general practitioners to align with AMR policy and the imperative of being restrictive with antibiotics, while still managing the risks threatening individual patients. As a consequence, lapses from AMR policy do not necessarily undermine it, but can instead be crucial to allowing the policy to work in the context of actual medical practice and, as such, be crucial to the overall success of the policy.

Keywords

Antimicrobial resistance; medical practice; risk; policy

Published in

Science as Culture
2020,
Publisher: ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD

Associated SLU-program

AMR: Bacteria


Sustainable Development Goals

SDG3 Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages


UKÄ Subject classification

Health Care Service and Management, Health Policy and Services and Health Economy


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2020.1780578

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/107230