Communicating Commitment to Antibiotic Stewardship: an Effective Strategy for Responding to Online Patient Reviews

Public health officials have worked to address the growing threat of antibiotic resistance. To slow the emergence of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, it is important to improve patients' understanding of antibiotics and adjust their expectations of them. This study explores strategic antibiotic resistance communication between patients and health care providers in an online review platform.

Based on two experimental studies, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the provider's commitment messaging when dealing with patients' complaints about not receiving requested antibiotics during their visit.

The findings from study 1 show that communicating the commitment to antibiotic stewardship makes participants have more favorable feelings toward the provider. Commitment messaging also makes readers perceive the provider as more credible, and they are more willing to visit the clinic in the future. Study 2 findings demonstrate a robustness of commitment messaging in increasing readers' willingness to visit the clinic, while the provider's response exhibits the limited impact of correcting patients' common misunderstandings of antibiotics and adjusting their expectations of antibiotics.

Our findings illustrate some clear benefits of engaging with negative online patient reviews to minimize potential reputational damage and reestablish the credibility of care providers.