Best Assessment of Sore Throat and Antibiotic Prescribing
For patients and families
In plain language
An automatic summary of structured registry data. It is an orientation aid, not a substitute for the official protocol or a physician assessment.
- What is being studied
- The protocol lists: Physicians assess patients, Nurses assess patients, Pharmacists assess patients.
- Who it may be relevant to
- Registry conditions: Pharyngitis. Basic parameters: from 6 years · All.
- What needs checking
- Age, condition and sex are only basic indicators. Prior treatment, laboratory values and other mandatory requirements appear in the eligibility criteria below.
- Where it takes place
- Sweden
- Next step
- Save the trial, show it to the treating physician, and confirm current recruitment with the study center. Costs, documents and travel →
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Overview
This project aims to investigate if an organisational change of patient flow away from medical practitioners can reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescribing in patients attending with a sore throat as the main complaint.
Detailed description
Today patients appear either at a PHC centre or at the Pharmacy. The Pharmacy may provide advice on analgesic or refer the patient to a PHC centre. At the PHC centre, the patient may first appear to the medical practitioner or a nurse pending on local routines. The current Swedish guideline recommends no antibiotics and no testing for patients with 0-2 Centor criteria. For patients with 3-4 Centor criteria the guideline recommends testing and only consider antibiotics if GAS is present.
COVID-19 has gradually transformed from expressing itself as a severe lower respiratory tract infection to be more of an upper respiratory tract infection. Furthermore, COVID-19 is likely to transform from a pandemic to an endemic state with a low continuous incidence. Hence, in response to COVID-19 it seems crucial to identify to what extent the common sore throat is caused by the SARS-CoV-2.
Furthermore, a large controlled clinical trial is required to sort out if patients attending with a sore throat as the main complaint are best managed by medical practitioners, nurses or pharmacists. This study aims to perform such a controlled clinical trial comparing the outcome of sore throat patients management by medical practitioner, nurses and pharmacists. This study also aims to investigate to what extent the SARS-CoV-2 virus is identified in these patients.
Interventions
- Behavioral Physicians assess patients
Physicians are asked to assess patients following the current Swedish guideline - Behavioral Nurses assess patients
Nurses are asked to assess patients following the current Swedish guideline - Behavioral Pharmacists assess patients
Pharmacists are asked to assess patients following the current Swedish guideline
Primary outcome measures
- Guideline adherence [Time frame: Immediately after the consultation]
Secondary outcome measures (3)
- Illness severity [Time frame: Immediately after the consultation]
- Type of patients seeking care [Time frame: Immediately after the consultation]
- Presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus [Time frame: Immediately after the consultation]
Eligibility criteria
Inclusion criteria
- The patient is contacting/attending PHC centre or Pharmacy presenting with a sore throat as the main complaint.
- Male or female, aged ≥6 years.
- Fluent in Swedish (reading, writing, conversational) (applicable to caregivers/parents/guardians in case of children).
- Mental state such that he or she can understand and give informed consent to participation in the study by signing the Information and Consent Form.
- Provision of signed and dated Informed Consent Form.
Exclusion criteria
- The illness episode is classified as potentially complicated or potentially critically ill
- Presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus in a patient first appearing at the PHC in a cluster where the assessment is supposed to be done by the pharmacists. The patient will not be sent to the pharmacist in case of presence of SARS-CoV-2-virus.
- Patient request to be withdrawn from the study.
Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.
Healthy volunteers: No
Study design
- Allocation
- Non-randomized
- Model
- Parallel assignment
- Masking
- Open label
- Primary purpose
- Treatment
Study locations
Sweden · 4 centers
- Apoteket — Stenungsund
- Närhälsan Stenungsund Vårdcentral — Stenungsund
- Praktikertjänst Hälsobrunnen Vårdcentral — Ulricehamn
- Apoteksgruppen — Ulricehamn
Identifiers
NCT: NCT06114706 · U1111-1299-3543