Vol. 10, Special Issue 12 (2025)

The gap between prescription recommendations and clinical use can be closed by identifying important factors influencing veterinarians' antimicrobial prescribing practice. Guidelines for judicious antibiotic use in veterinary medicine have been developed to reduce unnecessary antimicrobial prescribing, with a focus on clinical and pharmacological grounds.
A questionnaire study was conducted to analyse the factors that influence veterinarians' antimicrobial prescribing decisions in large animal practice, as well as to determine if non-clinical and non-pharmacological factors influence antimicrobial prescribing choice. The study findings demonstrated that clinical considerations influenced veterinarian’s antimicrobial prescribing decisions more than non-clinical reasons. Clinical signs/symptoms as well as the critical nature of the illness were the most often used clinical considerations in determining whether to prescribe an antimicrobial or not. Pharmacological considerations have a greater influence on antimicrobial prescribing than non-pharmacological factors. The most significant pharmacological factors were the antimicrobial's spectrum of activity, the duration of therapy and the route as well as frequency of administration.