I recently published an article where we looked at strategies parents use to make administration of foul tasting medicines better for their children. We were looking at a specific medicine (flucloxacillin) in children with Cystic Fibrosis.
We gathered our data by asked 250 parents what they do to try to get a full picture and then share this with other parents, doctors, nurses and pharmacists to help other patients and their families. This was a piece of research that I really enjoyed undertaking and writing.
Over the Christmas holiday I was contacted by a parent who wanted to know more as he was struggling to administer this medicine to his child. This made me feel both sad and happy. Sad because many parents go through this daily struggle to administer medicines to their children and happy because I was able to provide some evidence based advice and to reassure him that he is not alone. It is really important that we all do more to help the end user and really make a difference. My new year’s resolution was to try to develop a better tasting version of this medicine so that in future there is another option which would really make me happy!
hannahbatchelor.com 
If prizes were given for disgusting tasting medicines, flucloxacillin would probably win. 🙂 If you could develop one that didn’t taste awful, I think everybody would be happy!
Interesting that (from the abstract) more concentrated flucloxacillin is more palatable – I could never decide, myself, whether it’s worse to have a concentrated shot of it, or something that didn’t taste quite so bad but lasted longer. Nice to know the answer. 🙂
Did you consider the effect on bioavailability of mixing the flucloxacillin with food? (I can’t get the fulltext of your article yet – it’s embargoed for a year for me). Offhand, I don’t know whether there are data for fluclox, but cloxacillin bioavailability is reduced by 50%.
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Thanks for your comment. We did look at the evidence for bioavailability: co-administration of flucloxacillin with a large fatty meal showed a decrease in its availability – this study was conducted in adults. Although we don’t have evidence we suggest mixing the medicie with the smallest amount of food possible of following with a small chaser for children to minimise any potential effect of food
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