Stop taking Antibiotics when you feel better not at the end of the course?

Changes often bring surprises and they need to be risk assessed.  This new guidance is in direct conflict with what I have told patients for the thirty years that I have been qualified.  When I first qualified the message was pre-printed on labels which we religiously stuck onto the dispensing labels along with” Keep out the reach of children “and “Take half an hour after food “. So why the change?  Hospital use of antibiotics and duration of course are monitored and often people respond in different ways.  Antibiotic courses often and shortened if the patient is feeling better. In the community, most antibiotics are prescribed, there is not a routine follow up process and it may be time to advise patients to stop taking their anti-biotics when they feel better. There is evidence to support the view that completing the course of anti-biotics may increase the risk of anti-biotic resistance. Surely,  before we encourage patients to stop  when they feel better and not when their course of medication is finished, we  need more clinical trials to establish the optimal duration of anti-biotic courses.  In addition, we must keep up the education of both the public and the prescribers that anti-biotics do not help viral infections, so prescribing anti-biotics unnecessarily must be the preferred message to portray.