Experts have suggested a bigger role for pharmacists in penicillin skin testing, writing in Clinical Infectious Diseases that it would expand access to the service and be good for antimicrobial stewardship efforts.

“Processes to assess the likelihood of a patient having a penicillin allergy need to be made more available with a multidisciplinary approach,” Eunah Cheon, PharmD, BCPS, clinical pharmacy coordinator at New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, and Harold W. Horowitz, MD, an infectious disease specialist in the department of medicine at New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital and professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, wrote. “Penicillin allergy is one of the most frequently self-reported drug allergies in the United States population, with an incidence ranging from 10% to 20%, with less than 1% being truly allergic.”