COUGH SYRUP QUESTION

NEW RESOURCE: Tired of trying to regurgitate the same Cough/Cold/Flu pearls at every interaction? Check out our new patient handout by the same name under Other Practice Tools. Fully customizable as usual! 

What do you recommend for your cough/cold patients?

Click here for previous newsletters.

1. Counselling Conundrum: a real question from a patient

2. Concise Conclusion: a straight-forward patient-friendly answer 

3. Quick Wrap-up 

Clearly, there are nuances that may not be captured in this format. The goal here is to provide you with helpful counselling tips which often draw from multiple sources or those which are not commonly accessed by busy healthcare providers serving the community.

Counselling Conundrum: "What's the best cough syrup?"

Concise Conclusion: You may find that cough syrups provide you some comfort; one with DM for dry cough, or one with guaifenesin for wet cough. However, research doesn't really show that they help much. Take your pick based on personal preference with ingredients that treat your particular symptoms, or you could also try 1 teaspoonful of honey at bedtime.

Quick Wrap-up: Cough syrup doesn't work, however keep in mind that trying something may prevent this patient from going to a walk-in clinic and receiving inappropriate antibiotics, even if just by allowing them some time to recover on their own.

Dive Deeper

1) https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD001831.pub5/full

We hope you have found this useful. A reply to this email with any feedback or topic suggestion you may have would be greatly appreciated. Your input will be the key to making this newsletter the best it can be.