Measurement of factors underlying physician misprescription of antibiotics should be made using reliable scales because these factors are extremely difficult to identify and assess.
The aim of the study was to develop and validate -in terms of face validity, content validity and reliability- an instrument designed to assess the attitudes and knowledge underlying physician antibiotic prescribing.
Hence, this questionnaire should be used to assess factors underlying physician-prescribing behaviour in hospital and primary care, along with other possible variables, such as socio-demographic or professional-practice variables (medical specialisation, workplace and workflow).
Future research should focus on aspects such as the cognitive mechanisms underlying physician's behaviour, as studied by Godin et al [ 47], in order to incorporate cost considerations into GP decision making.
This study sought to develop and validate -in terms of face validity, content validity and reliability- an instrument designed to assess the attitudes and knowledge underlying physician antibiotic prescribing, in order to understand and improve antibiotic use in both hospital- and primary-care settings.
Ideally, despite physicians differing in their judgments, patients should all receive the same information describing potential treatment options and the reasons underlying variability in physicians' recommendation should be transparent.
Due to underlying lung pathology, physicians treating these patients generally employ restrictive fluid strategy.
To assign the unique cause of death from the immediate and underlying causes, the physicians prioritized the main cause of diseases.
However, physicians' underlying reasons to withhold chemotherapy is best illustrated with atypical patient cases.
Further efforts are needed to ensure that the reasons underlying variability in physicians' recommendations are transparent.
