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Over 95 percent of physicians are concerned about antibiotic resistance, a Consumer Reports poll found. And they have good reason to. Called a global threat by the World Health Organization and “the next pandemic” by CDC director Thomas Friedan, antibiotic resistance threatens their ability to do their jobs. Imagine being a doctor and having to tell a patient with a common but serious disease, like pneumonia, a urinary tract infection or gonorrhea, that there’s nothing you can do to help them.

In fact, this is already becoming their reality: of the 500 doctors polled, 85 percent said they’d treated a patient with a confirmed or suspected antibiotic-resistant infection; 35 percent saw their patient suffer serious complications or die as a result.

There is, of course, a large role for doctors to play in helping to solve this problem: antibiotics lose their efficacy when they’re overprescribed, which doctors have been known to do when they’re uncertain about a diagnosis, when they’re pressed for time or in order to placate pushy patients. Despite growing awareness of the […]