WAAW Vlogs: Penicillin Allergy

These vlogs has been created for WAAW to support the daily theme of ‘Antimicrobials and untrue or spurious allergy’. They discuss why de-labelling patients with false/spurious penicillin allergy is important to patient outcomes, the barriers to rolling out changes to the de-labelling process, and how changes to documentation practice can support this effort. A number of research studies are highlighted, which aim to address the dearth of research to inform policy

Inaccurate Penicillin allergy labels and their adverse effects on antimicrobial stewardship, patient outcomes and antimicrobial resistance

Dr Jonathan Sandoe – Associate Professor at the University of Leeds/ Hon Consultant Microbiologist presents on the ALABAMA study (ALlergy AntiBiotics And Microbial resistAnce), introducing the programme of work for this study and the study aims. Dr Sandoe discusses the burden of inaccurate penicillin allergy labels and his research into addressing this problem.

Non-allergist penicillin allergy de-labelling – the challenges

Dr Louise Savic – Consultant Anaesthetist at Leeds Teaching Hospitals – speaks about penicillin allergy de-labelling by non-allergy specialists and the challenges that the NHS faces in rolling out processes for removing these labels. Dr Savic goes on to introduce the SPACE study (Spurious Penicillin Allergy in seCondary carE) which is investigating the de-labelling of spurious penicillin allergy labels by non-allergy specialists, the acceptability of this intervention amongst patients and healthcare professionals and the potential economic benefit of this intervention.

Improving Documentation of Drug Allergy Status

Sarah Denman – Highly Advanced Clinical Pharmacist Immunology and Allergy at Leeds Teaching Hospitals discusses how the documentation of drug allergy statuses can be improved in order to support inaccurate antimicrobial allergy de-labelling in order to improve patient outcomes. This includes key information on what information should be included in drug allergy documentation and the important questions to ask.