• Individuals may suffer side effects.
• Antibiotic use will affect an individual’s future bacterial flora, and may increase their risk of infection with multi-resistant organisms or clostridium difficile.
• Antibiotic use will affect others in the community, and may increase their risk of infection with multi-resistant organisms.
• The use of broad-spectrum antibiotics is more likely to lead to antibiotic resistance than the use of targeted narrow-spectrum antibiotics.

To prevent infection, prophylactic antibiotics should target the most likely micro-organisms that pose risk to the patient, and for the shortest duration possible.

To treat suspected or confirmed infection, you should first try to find a focus (e.g. respiratory, urinary) and consider the severity of infection.

• If the infection is mild to moderate, you have time to confirm the source of infection, and to consider if it is more likely to be bacterial or viral.
• In the setting of severe sepsis, treatment should be commenced early, with broad spectrum intravenous antibiotics that will act quickly.