A “staggering proportion of inpatients” are treated as allergic to penicillins despite antibiotic allergy labels often being incorrect, frontline experts say.

The Canberra Health Services’ (CHS) Antimicrobial Stewardship Team launched a monthly antimicrobial prescribing audit back in December 2022.

The hospital audit has helped doctors avoid prolonged surgical prophylaxis and exposed unnecessary antibiotic allergy labels, leading to an award for excellence in clinical care standards from the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care.

“For a patient to have a thorough antibiotic allergy documentation, they have to have the name of the antibiotic and the severity of the reaction, and often it was not documented to that extent,” says CHS senior antimicrobial stewardship pharmacist Laura Triggs.