The recommendations given in this guide are meant to serve as treatment guidelines they should not supplant clinical judgment or infectious diseases consultation when indicated the recommendations were developed for use at the johns hopkins hospital and thus may not be appropriate for other settings we have attempted to verify that all information is correct but because of ongoing research . Be antibiotics aware is a national effort to help fight antibiotic resistance and improve antibiotic prescribing and use antibiotics save lives but any time antibiotics are used they can cause side effects and lead to antibiotic resistance in us doctors offices and emergency departments at least 47 million antibiotic prescriptions each year are unnecessary which makes improving . This study should represent a salutary lesson to those who may be devising clinical guidelines for antibiotic usage or indeed for any other purpose that if the intended users of the guidelines fail to implement them their efforts will have been wasted in the light of the results of this study and evidence that they are far from unique as well as a greater trend toward producing