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Antibiotic shots in hip after emergency root canal for abscess?

Sorry, I find the thought of pulling one's knickers down at the dentist's deeply disturbing :o . Has anyone else here tried to picture the scene with their own dentist :redface:? Even with a modesty sheet the idea seems outrageous.

So I take it then that there are no emergency pharmacy rotas in the U.S. like there are in the UK and the rest of Europe?

In some big cities, there is one pharmacy that operates round the clock, but it may be an hour's drive on the other side of town.

When you live in a smaller community such as we do, that only has one or two pharmacies, they usually close the pharmacy counter at 6PM or sometimes 8 PM even if the rest of the store is open till 9, and there's nothing available till the next morning. It could be a considerable drive to a city big enough that would have a 24 hour pharmacy. Even the pharmacies attached to hospitals close early in the evening.

Even in a regular doctor's office in the US, they never use modesty sheets for giving shots in the hips. I have never heard of that being done, and certainly none of the doctors I have ever attended offered them for getting a shot. Those are only handed out when a patient is completely undressed for an examination.

Apparently it's more of an issue to people in the UK then? I asked all three of my daughters (11, 15, 18) and they say they don't see their bottoms as being private areas that shouldn't be seen by others. It may be a thing with the younger generation where that has changed from how it used to be, I don't know. But it doesn't bother me to get shots in the hip and never has bothered me for a medical professional like a doctor or nurse even to see me totally naked.
 
So here's what I learned yesterday afternoon from talking to several people who should know.

I called the state licensing board in three different states including mine. All of them said under the circumstances they feel the dentist did the right thing by giving the antibiotic injections in the office at the time of treatment, based upon her having a badly abscessed tooth, extreme pain, and running a high fever. They said that dentists are allowed to prescribe antibiotics exactly as a medical doctor can, and that also gives them the authority to administer antibiotics in the office by injection although that is not done very often. One of the people I talked to at a state board told me it may depend a lot upon which dental college the dentist attended and what years they were in school because some things that were recommended as standard procedure a few decades ago may not be used by everyone today. All of them said that if the situation was clearly explained, and consent given by both the minor patient and a person of legal age having the right to give consent, and the female dental assistant was present in the exam room during the time my daughter's bottom was exposed, then there is no issue and nothing to be concerned about.

We are in the process of switching my 15 year old from her pediatrician over to a regular family doctor, as she has been saying for some time that she's too big to be going to the clinic with all the little ones. Since she turned 15 just last week, we agreed that she could start attending my family doctor from now on and we actually had already made an appointment for her first physical exam later this week. I have gone to this doctor for a number of years and like her, so I called and spoke to her about this situation. She had nothing but praise for the dentist, and says that was an excellent choice to give my daughter the antibiotic injections since the pharmacy was closed. I asked her opinion on why they had to give two shots, one in each hip and she says that the dosage of penicillin needed is quite large, and they likely were using standard prefilled syringes of 5ml each, so it would be necessary to give two shots to get a large enough dosage, and if you were giving a patient two such shots, it would be out of courtesy to do one in each hip otherwise there might be swelling or it would be more painful if only done on one side.

So I think that answers any concerns that I might have initially had, and I want to thank everyone again for their interesting comments and helpful answers. I'm still quite surprised that some found it questionable, but I can see now that there are differences in people's personal levels of modesty, and in how things are done in the UK vs how they are done in the US.
 
Thank you so much Lee Ann for contacting not just one, but 3 state licensing boards! That is fascinating - I would never in a million years have guessed that the difference between the U.K. and U.S. was so huge in terms of scope of practice, safeguarding, and general perceptions of modesty/privacy and what is acceptable behaviour and what is not. This thread has been a real eye-opener for me.
 
I'm the 15 year old daughter this is all about. Lee Ann is my wonderful mom.

I wanted to have a chance to give my own thoughts on this.

I read all the replies and it's been a roller coaster of doubts and support.

I want everyone to know I totally trust our family's dentist. When my big sis took me there last Thursday I was in terrible pain. My left cheek was swollen and I had a temperature. I felt horrible and knew there was some sort of serious problem since it had been getting worse over a few days.

I'm kinda bummed out at mom for making such a big deal about this. But then she's just being a mom, and I love her. I guess I should be thankful she was willing to find out more because she wasn't sure.

I didn't know the dentist would be giving me shots in the butt, but that wouldn't have stopped me from going. They did talk to me and my big sis before they did it and we both told them it was OK.

Mom was kinda upset for a while because she didn't understand. None of us knew that a dentist could do that.

I want to make it perfectly clear that nothing happened that would make me suspect anything was being done that shouldn't have been. Even though my butt is kinda big, it didn't bother me to pull my pants and panties down to get the shots. I didn't know how far to pull them down and they never told me, so I pulled them down enough that my butt was bare and they could put the shots in.

I don't care that the dentist and the assistant saw my butt for a couple minutes. To me that is not a problem and there are so many bare butts on TV and in the movies and at the beach that by now everyone has seen lots of them. So it doesn't matter to me if they saw mine or if anyone sees mine. Its not like other places that should be kept covered.

They needed to put the shots there, and it hurt like hell when they did it and for a while afterward but by the next day I was already feeling better.

Today I am a lot better, my mouth and tooth no longer hurt at all. Mom has talked with a bunch of you, and a bunch of other people. She apologized to me for making this a bigger deal than it actually was. Just like mom said, I think all of us learned something from this. I'm totally OK with it.
 
I'm wondering if Intra-muscular injections in UK would typically be done into thigh rather than buttock? Much less embarrassing. I can only once recall being injected in the thigh in hospital and strangely that was an anti-swelling drug after wisdom teeth removal under GA sometime in the 20th century ;D.
 
I'm wondering if Intra-muscular injections in UK would typically be done into thigh rather than buttock? Much less embarrassing. I can only once recall being injected in the thigh in hospital and strangely that was an anti-swelling drug after wisdom teeth removal under GA sometime in the 20th century ;D.

Upper outer quadrant of buttocks is the preferred place for antibiotic injection. Of interest years ago a good friend of mine also a dentist was trying to get his wife pregnant. She required fertility treatment which included buttock injections of hormones. He asked me to give it as he wasn't comfortable with it. SO okay I'll show you how so I'm being the professional that I can be and with his wife's bottom exposed I'm explaining the anatomy and how you select the right spot and so on he starts making jokes. Not appreciated by his wife. They adopted.
 
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