A dentist, a discharging hospital and a nursing home each get their own antibiotics leaflet

Be Antibiotics Aware is the CDC's campaign for appropriate antibiotic
prescribing, and its educational materials are organised by setting rather
than by drug or by infection.

Three of them

Dentists: treating patients with dental pain and swelling. A fact sheet of
treatment guidelines. Dental pain is one of the classic routes to an
unnecessary antibiotic: the patient is in real pain, the definitive treatment
is a procedure, and a prescription is what can be offered today.

At hospital discharge. A poster giving **four steps to ensure appropriate
prescribing at discharge**. Discharge is a known gap — the antibiotic decision
is made in a hurry, by someone who may not have followed the admission, for a
course the patient will finish at home unsupervised.

Nursing home healthcare professionals. Long-term care has its own pattern:
residents who cannot always describe symptoms, a high background of
colonisation that looks like infection on a test, and a low threshold for
treating "just in case".

Why the split is the point

Antibiotic stewardship guidance that addresses "clinicians" in general reaches
nobody in particular. The pressures that produce an unnecessary prescription
are specific to the room:

• The dentist is treating pain that the prescription will not relieve
• The hospital doctor is signing a discharge for a patient they will not see
  again
• The nursing home clinician is often prescribing by telephone, for someone
  they cannot examine

Each needs a different argument and a different alternative, which is why
there are separate documents rather than one.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.