As a physician, I had always assumed that patients were the ones who pressured physicians for an unnecessary antibiotic prescription. I found out that this is not necessarily the case when I recently became ill while attending, ironically enough, an infectious disease conference on antibiotic-resistant bacteria sponsored by the US Department of Health and Human Services.
The morning after the seminar, I woke up with a sore throat. I wondered where it came from and thought about the prior week. My wife and I were with my granddaughter, who had a recurrent ear infection, and at the time I had wondered whether she had a recalcitrant bacterial infection.