Abstract
Aim: To evaluate college students’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about antibiotic use for simple viral infections.|Background: Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem. College aged students are at an increased risk for simple respiratory infections and have poor knowledge of appropriate antibiotic use (Smith, Rigassio-Radler, Denmark, Haley, & Touger-Decker, 2012; Turner & Keller, 2015).|Methods: Students (N=44) age 19-25 seen at the college health center of a small, private university in Omaha, Nebraska from September 1 2017-December 11, 2017 presenting with symptoms of an upper respiratory infection (URI) were eligible to participate. Participants were given a survey prior to seeing the healthcare provider. During the visit, providers reviewed an educational handout discussing appropriate antibiotic use for URIs and then gave the student a post-survey to complete.|Results: Participants basic knowledge of antibiotics improved, however, due to the limited sample size results cannot be generalized to the entire population. Overall, the intervention did improve antibiotic knowledge among these participants.|Conclusions: College-aged students benefit from additional education about antibiotics. Based on this project’s results, educational handouts are successful at improving knowledge.