Richmond Lock Surgery 2017-03-24 Person 3 5 0

I have been at this practice for almost two years now, and I have always had good treatment. I especially rate Dr Sowden, who strikes a good balance between listening to take in all relevant information and offering advice. However, recently I went to the practice for a follow up appointment for my 10 month old girl who had a chest infection. She had been given antibiotics (amoxicillin) on a Monday night by a doctor at the out of hours clinic at Teddington Memorial Hospital. He recomended that we have a follow up appointment with our GP in two days (i.e. Wednesday). There were no advance appointments available, so we needed to get a same day appointment. We were assigned Dr Michael Mayer. Although my daughter showed signs of getting better, I had some real concerns about the tolerability of the antibiotic. She had vomited several times, each time directly after taking the medicine. I was worried about her developing resistance. We were also instructed to give the antibiotic every 8 hours which meant waking her up in the middle of the night, which is very disturbing for a little one, especially in this case as she vomited. I told him all of this and asked if we could switch to a different antibiotic which would have less nausea and vomiting and would not need to be taken every 8 hours. He said that he recommended staying on the amoxicillin as she seemed to be improving and other medication could have the same side effects. I tried to stress my concern about resistance and also that waking her in the middle of the night was really disturbing her, bit he kept pushing for us to stay on amoxicillin and sent us on our way. Feeling dissatisfied with the situation, my husband looked up information on the timing of the dosing and what to do if the child vomits and found advice on the Mayo Clinic website suggesting that the medicine could be given less than 8 hours apart, e.g. at breakfast lunch and dinner. It also said that if the child vomits within 30 minutes of receiving the medication, he or she should be given the same dose again. Dr Mayer failed to give any of this information to us despite me communicating specific concerns about those two things. This advice would have been very useful and should be given to parents in future.