Patients not finishing the prescribed dose is attributed as an important factor in growing resistance of antibiotics. Though this is anecdonal, I've seen multiple instances of people not wanting to "over-eat" medicine (notwithstanding what doctor told them).
The self-medication trait is quite prevalent, atleast in developing countries, where people think doctors just shove extra medicine down their throat to make money so they self-adjust the dose and stop eating the moment they feel better. Then to make things worse, they never throw the remaining "good" medicine away and self-administer that the next time things get bad. When this remaining "good" medicine doesn't work, they go to doctor again and repeat the cycle.
This. There are very very few ways to deal with fungal infections, the most common pathway is one that is targeted by the azoles agents. Yet analogs of azoles are routinely used not to kill fungus infections but to merely control them on plants. They are used wholesale for this purpose. So guess what, there is huge resistance popping up in fungal infections that infect human beings against azole agents. Add this problem to global warming and you have a huge looming problem not just with bacteria, but fungus and molds as well. And all the new drugs in the past two decades have targeted the same pathway. So we're sort of lost on how to deal with fungus going forward.
Is the prescribed dose tailored for the specific patient, though? I don't think so, at least not in the UK on the NHS.
I can understand why many people think it's just a standardised fits-the-medicine-jar prescription when the label says 'take two a day for two weeks' as if their ailment adheres to strict calendar periods.
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The self-medication trait is quite prevalent, atleast in developing countries, where people think doctors just shove extra medicine down their throat to make money so they self-adjust the dose and stop eating the moment they feel better. Then to make things worse, they never throw the remaining "good" medicine away and self-administer that the next time things get bad. When this remaining "good" medicine doesn't work, they go to doctor again and repeat the cycle.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock#Un...
I can understand why many people think it's just a standardised fits-the-medicine-jar prescription when the label says 'take two a day for two weeks' as if their ailment adheres to strict calendar periods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy85bNje-Wo
No where near as bad as this woman obviously, as antibiotics did work on his infection.