A recent Prevention of Future Deaths report has highlighted the importance of ensuring patients with known allergies have regular reviews — both to check they know what to do in the event of a reaction, and to check the expiry date of their adrenaline auto-injector (AAI).
Following the case, the GP practice involved started sending automatic text messages to patients with a known allergy who hadn’t ordered an AAI in over 12 months, prompting them to check the expiry date. It’s a simple, low-cost intervention, and one most clinical systems could replicate without much difficulty.
There’s an added layer of risk worth being aware of: transitioning from child to adult AAI use. NHS England’s updated Specialist Allergy Service Specification strengthens the requirement on specialist allergy providers to support this transition, including holding joint annual review meetings with patients and their family or carers. General practice won’t run those meetings, but it’s worth knowing they should be happening for any patient moving through that transition, and following up if they don’t seem to be.
Medicines reviews are also a natural point to check patients are on the appropriate AAI dose for their current age and weight — a dose that was correct at diagnosis may not still be correct years later, particularly for patients who were prescribed one as a child.
Worth doing now: check whether your clinical system can flag patients with a known allergy who haven’t ordered an AAI in the last 12 months, consider a text reminder along the lines of the practice in the report, and build an expiry and dose check into your medicines review process rather than leaving it to chance.
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