Table 3.

Themes and quotations from primary care physicians regarding patient and physician education as antibiotic stewardship activities

Themes	Quotations
Need for patient education	‘It will not work unless you educate the population. You cannot attack the doctors and curtail what they are doing until you educate patients that your doctor is doing the right thing.’ – Birmingham, family medicine/internal medicine physician ‘I think it’s more education. I think you could probably do more with a commercial than you can with anything else.’ – Chicago, paediatrician
Acceptability of physician education	‘Parents are going to ask. They don’t know what’s right or wrong. They’re not medically trained. It’s the physicians that need more education about not prescribing.’ – Chicago, paediatrician ‘I think the best education strategy we could get and maybe there could be a study done is how, what is the best way to communicate to patients that antibiotic overprescribing and resistance is a problem and that rings true to them, that we can tell them this and they’re going to understand that and accept the fact that it didn’t lead to antibiotics.’ – Los Angeles, family medicine/internal medicine physician