A significant number of patients in the US lie to their doctors to get antibiotics they likely don’t need, according to two new studies. While that may not be a startling revelation, the studies drills down on the phenomenon, finding that the lies patients tell are generally bad ones—and yet, they work almost all the time. In the two linked studies published Friday in JAMA Network Open, a team of researchers led by Alistair Thorpe at the University of Utah analyzed online survey data from over 1,000 adults.
They found that over a quarter of people reported having lied to a clinician at least once to get an antibiotic prescription for themselves or a child in their care. Patients lied by either exaggerating symptoms, making up symptoms, or—most often—both. But interestingly, the lies people told to get antibiotics involved making up or exaggerating symptoms of infections that wouldn’t be treated with antibiotics.
For example, the most common falsehoods were symptoms associated with colds, such as fever, cough, and sore throat. That’s despite the fact that colds are caused by viruses, not bacteria—which antibiotics treat. Further, while the data suggests many patients were being dishonest, clinicians responded with what could be considered their own form of dishonesty; in most cases, the dubious fibs led to antibiotic prescriptions.
Specifically, 77 percent of adult patients and 87 percent of caregivers said their lies worked, leading them to get the antibiotic prescriptions they wanted. For the study, the researchers reviewed survey responses from 1,371 online respondents and found 959 responses that were valid and complete. Of those, 268 (28 percent) respondents reported misrepresenting their symptoms to get antibiotics.
Of those, 108 reported exaggerating symptoms, 19 reported fabricating symptoms, and 141 reported doing both. In a separate analysis of 263 respondents who identified as caregivers, 63 (27 percent) reported misrepresenting symptoms of a child to get antibiotics.
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