Sore throat is one of the most common medical problems being encountered by people. In terms of prevalence, it is comparable to flu (influenza) and cough. Aside from the discomfort and in more severe cases, pain, that it causes, sore throat may also disrupt a person’s life. A person who has a sore throat, for example, would most likely have a concomitant fever as this usually accompanies medical problems that are associated with infection.
Having fever can prevent a person from going to work and or fulfilling his daily responsibilities. So, despite the fact that sore throat is often not a serious and life threatening medical problem, its spread should still be prevented; in this paper, the author takes on the topic of using antibiotic therapy to address sore throat. It is worth noting that sore throats are often caused by viruses. Viruses, just like bacteria, are foreign entities that are not supposed to get in contact with the body’s internals.
Once they do, however, they would most likely cause problems and one of such is sore throat. The mechanism of contracting a virus-caused sore throat is similar to the process of contracting flu or colds. The body has its own way of fighting viruses. In most cases, the body develops immunity against various strains of viruses so that another set of viral attacks, provided that it is the same viral strain, would not be able to do as much damage.
Antibiotics cannot be used to treat virus-cased sore throat. There are sore throats that are caused by bacterial infection, however, and it would be these types of sore throats that can be effectively treated by antibiotic therapy . The stakeholder groups in this case would be the patients, the health and medical professionals and the members of the community. Their role is to work together to come up with a good and effective education plan aimed at improving the awareness and knowledge of patients and would-be patients of sore throat regarding the use of antibiotic therapy.
Conceptual Framework for Each Stakeholder Group
The Patients
The most important stakeholder for sore throat therapy, regardless whether the use of antibiotic-based treatments is the main weapon or any other proven treatment, would be the patients. They are the ones who get affected by sore throat. They are the ones whose lives get disrupted; who become unable to go to work and take care of their responsibilities all because of the negative effects of sickness secondary to sore throat. The most important part of the stakeholder educational plan is to keep the patients engaged .
Sore throats are often taken for granted because they are not dangerous and or life threatening compared to other diseases. However, all medical conditions that have the potential of causing discomfort and disruption on a patient’s ability to live normally should be treated equally. A child who has a sore throat may be forced to miss classes in school in order to have some rest. A mother who has to take care of his children may not be able to do so because she has a sore throat.
A father who has to go to work may have to call in sick in the office because of sore throat. These are some of the common examples of what could happen to patients of sore throat. The main purpose of the patients would be to be educated. Without proper education, they would simply fall prey to the common misconceptions about diseases, medical conditions, and medical and healthcare practices.
It would be more effective and efficient if there overall awareness and knowledge about a certain medical condition, or in this case sore throat and the use of antibiotics against it, would be improved. Below are some of the important tidbits they ought to know.
The Health and Medical Professionals
Patients depend on the health and medical professionals for help and consultation whenever they feel ill or want to make sure that they are taking care of themselves well. A patient who feels that he may be having sore throat would, for example, go to a clinic to undergo medical examination. The purpose of the health and medical professionals in this case then would be to provide the necessary expertise to educate and treat the patients .
It is important for the patients to be aware of their condition and be educated as to the things that they could do and should not do in order to improve their condition. The information presented above about sore throat, its causes, and the use and limitations of antibiotic therapies should be discussed by the health and medical professionals. One common mistake among health and medical professionals during stakeholder education plans and programs is that they assume that their patients already know everything about their condition.
What makes that kind of thinking wrong is the fact that health and medical professionals have undergone rigorous training and education in allied medical institutions that is why it is only reasonable for them to know a lot about various medical conditions including sore throat.
The patients did not have access to such training and education and so it would only be reasonable to expect that they know little to nothing about their condition. If anything, the things that they know about their condition (i.e. sore throat) would be products of hearsays and myths. Apart from making sure that the patients get the appropriate and necessary treatment, a huge chunk of the medical and health professionals’ role involves educating the patients.
The Community
The effectiveness of the community in playing its role in the process of preventing and addressing a prevalent medical condition such as sore throat can be a game changer for health and other social responsibility programs . The community pertains to the stakeholder group composed of people living in the same geographical area or sharing a common demographic factor or characteristic. It may be people within a certain socioeconomic group or any stratified group of people for that matter.
The role of the community is to work together to improve the overall state of health of its members. People who got to clinics and hospitals are those who already exhibit signs and symptoms of sore throat. There are numerous ways how to prevent sore throats and this is something that the community can play a huge role on. Just like the patients, the community and its members must be educated about the medical condition or disease they are trying to combat or prevent. By doing so, they would be equipped with the right knowledge to make the changes they wanted to make.
For example, if they want to improve their collective ability to lower the prevalence rate of sore throat or to banish it altogether, they may target certain risk factors that increase the people’s risk of contracting sore throat. Focusing on antibiotic therapy, they may be able to identify the signs and symptoms of sore throat that are caused by bacteria and can therefore be effectively treated by antibiotics.
As for the prevention of sore throat, they may be able to come up with programs that are aimed at reducing the level of air pollution within the community, encouraging the people to undergo routine medical checkups, and most importantly, providing the antibiotics, medications, and services that people who already have sore throat need.
Educational Intervention
Viruses develop new strains from time to time. For example, the virus that infected an individual a few years ago would most likely be different from the one that is infecting that individual today. Viruses mutate and during the process of mutation, new strains get developed. These new strains do not get recognized by the body’s immune system and this is why a person can have successive bouts of sore throats within a certain period.
This is also why vaccines against sore throats, and even flus and colds are not effective. The viruses that cause them mutate from time to time and so existing vaccinations would only work for the previous strains of viruses, strains which would most likely be already outdated. This reality defeats the purpose of being vaccinated which is to artificially stimulate a person’s immune response against a foreign entity, often a virus.
Simply put, vaccination and even the body’s innate ability to develop immunity are useless against constantly and rapidly mutating viruses such as the ones found in sore throats. This is something that patients, as the most important stakeholder group should be educated about. It would help for them to know the advantages and disadvantages of vaccination, including its limitations. The rationale behind the discussion on viruses and vaccination is the fact that antibiotics do not kill viruses. And, it is a fact that majority of sore throats are caused not by bacteria but by viruses.
So, antibiotic-based therapies and regimens may not be the best choice if the end goal is to efficiently treat sore throat. It is important for the patients to know, however, that some sore throats are caused by bacteria. In those cases, antibiotic therapy may be the best solution as antibiotics are specially designed to kill bacteria living inside the body, including those that are causing sore throats.
The most common risk factors for developing sore throats must also be discussed to the patients. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2016), there are many things that can increase an individual’s risk for a sore throat and some of the examples are age, exposure to someone with sore throat, season or time of the year, weather, irregularity in one’s tonsils (especially its shape), air pollution, state of an individual’s immune system, presence of allergies, and other diseases that may have sore throat as a manifestation.
Summary and Implementation Plan
In summary, for a stakeholder education plan that is focused on antibiotic therapy for sore throat, the top three stakeholders that the author of this paper has identified are the patients, the medical and health workers, and the community. Each of these three stakeholder groups have an important role to play in addressing the real problems associated with sore throat and the apparently improper use of antibiotic therapy to address them. Collectively, their goal is to make sure that all forms of sore throat are treated appropriately.
A complementary goal would be disseminating knowledge as to the actual uses and limitations of antibiotics when it comes to the treatment of sore throat, educating the people as to what they can do to prevent contracting it, and increasing their overall awareness about the condition. Ideally, these three groups should be able to work together to implement an integrated educational and awareness program regarding the use of antibiotic therapy for sore throat.
The said program should address the following key topics based on the patient stakeholder group discussion earlier: 1) What is sore throat 2) Its different causes (viral and bacterial) 3) What antibiotic therapy can and cannot do when it comes to sore throat treatment 4) and what the medical and healthcare professionals, the patients, and the members of the community can do to contribute.
References
CDC. (2016). Introduction to Program Evaluation for Public Health Programs. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/eval/guide/step1/.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2016). Get Smart: Know When Antibiotics Work. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/getsmart/community/for-patients/common-illnesses/sore-throat.html.
Heismann, K. (2014). Why stakeholder engagement is key to successful CSR programs. Green Biz, Retrieved from https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/10/23/stakeholder-engagement-key-csr-online-communities.
Kenny, T. (2015). Sore Throat. Patient Info, Retrieved from http://patient.info/health/sore-throat-leaflet.
Little, P., Gould, C., Williamson, I., Warner, G., Gantley, M., & Kinmonth, A. (1997). Reattendance and complications in a randomised trial of prescribing strategies for sore throat: the medicalising effect of prescribing antibiotics. BMJ, 350-352.
