Successfully educating urgent care patients on appropriate use and risks of antibiotics can be challenging. We assessed the conscious and subconscious impact various educational materials (informational handout, priming poster, and commitment poster) had on urgent care patients’ knowledge and expectations regarding antibiotics.

Stratified Block Randomized Control Trial.

Urgent care centers (UCCs) in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, and New Jersey.

Urgent care patients.

We randomized 29 UCCs across six study arms to display specific educational materials (informational handout, priming poster, and commitment poster). The primary intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis evaluated whether the materials impacted patient knowledge or expectations of antibiotic prescribing by assigned study arm. The secondary as-treated analysis evaluated the same outcome comparing patients who recalled seeing the assigned educational material and patients who either did not recall seeing an assigned material or were in the control arm.

Twenty-seven centers returned 2,919 questionnaires across six study arms. Only 27.2% of participants in the intervention arms recalled seeing any educational materials. In our primary ITT analysis, no difference in knowledge or expectations of antibiotic prescribing was noted between groups. However, in the as-treated analysis, the handout and commitment poster were associated with higher antibiotic knowledge scores.

Educational materials in UCCs are associated with increased antibiotic-related knowledge among patients when they are seen and recalled; however, most patients do not recall passively displayed materials. More emphasis should be placed on creating and drawing attention to memorable patient educational materials.