Group and committee reports

Junior members

Nurses in Allergy Commitee

Cherry Alviani

(pictured) Paediatric Allergy Registrar, University Hospital Southampton

and Neha Christian

Adult Allergy Registrar, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust; Junior Members Representatives We are delighted to have taken over the Junior Members Representative role from October 2021. It’s been a busy period of settling into the role, and we both feel that having a joint approach, with a representative from both the Adult and the Paediatric trainees cohort, is highly beneficial. One of the biggest challenges we face is the merging of the adult allergy and Immunology Curricula, and how our training days can adapt to this. The training programme outline for 20222024 has been now finalized, whilst the next iteration of the training programme will more fundamentally reflect the change to the curriculum. For the time being the training days continue to remain virtual, which has really maximised attendance. Going forward, we’d love to see a return to some face to face training meetings and perhaps we will be able to adopt RECENT ACTIVITIES:

• Online networking through Basecamp • Exciting programme of webinars and virtual events

• New online learning modules under development

a hybrid model. We are also looking into organizing evening teaching session with special focus on immunology which will help adult allergy trainees to better integrate into the new curriculum.

The Medical Scholars programme has been extremely successful this year, with over 30 applicants and 21 scholarships awarded. The aim of this programme is to help promote an interest in a career in Allergy and Immunology, and it’s great to see such positive uptake. We have just launched a survey of the previous Scholars to determine whether they have progressed onto a career in Allergy and look forward to sharing these results for you in due course.

We offer a warm welcome to our new nurse committee members Shauna McKibben (Primary Care Representative), James Gardner (Vice Chair) and Sarah Burrell (Secretary). In March we were able to hold our first face to face committee meeting since the pandemic began. It was lovely to be back together again and to be able to meet new members in the flesh!

Hannah Kramer

Paediatric Allergy Nurse Specialist (London) and Chair of the Nurses in Allergy Committee

We said goodbye to our previous Chair, Lucy Common, back in November. We thank her for her hard work over her term. Lucy has led us through a challenging few years, but remained positive and passionate about nursing careers, enabling us to offer support to our colleagues across the country via virtual sessions during the pandemic.

Our most recent meeting was a productive one, setting out our goals and objectives for the coming year. Our first objective is to establish an ‘Annual Allergy Update’ study day for BSACI nursing members. We are aiming for this to be a virtual day in October 2022, free for members and offering sessions suitable for both adult and paediatric nurses. Watch this space. We aim to begin advertising the programme and further details in the summer.

Our second goal for this year is to update our ‘Allergy Nurse Competencies’ education document. We hope to expand the content to be more representative of the skills and knowledge we use in practice, incorporating intra-dermal testing and research sections. We will of course be reaching out to our nurse members first though via a short survey to welcome feedback on the current document so that we can be sure that all needs are met by the updated version.

We organised an informal social meet for those of you who attended the WAO & BSACI conference in Edinburgh. This was a great opportunity to meet colleagues from across the British Isles.

As always, we welcome any communication via our email address nurses@bsaci.org please do get in touch if there is anything we can support with. Or indeed you can follow us on Twitter @BSACInurses

Standards of Care Committee

Dr David Luyt

Consultant in Paediatric Allergy, University Hospitals of Leicester; Chair of the Standards of Care Committee This update brings news of further changes in the membership of SOCC. We said goodbye to Helen Fisher who was our nursing representative on the committee; and welcome to Kerrie Kirk who was appointed after interview in a strong competitive field. I know Kerrie well having worked with her in the Children’s Allergy service in Leicester (for more years that we both care to remember) where she is our lead specialist paediatric allergy nurse.

We are also in a transition period of handover of our guideline manager. Colleagues will recall that we welcomed Erinn Gallagher this time last year. Erinn decided to move back home to Australia at the end of last year and continued in her role remotely. However, I am pleased to announce that Dr Shifa Shaikh has recently been appointed as the new Clinical Guidelines and Registry Manager. We look forward to working with her.

There has also been progress with guideline production with both the ‘Adrenaline autoinjectors (AAI) prescription for anaphylaxis in adults and children: guidance for primary care’ and ‘BSACI guideline for the diagnosis and management of Pollen Food Syndrome/ Oral Allergy Syndrome’ submitted to Clinical Experimental Allergy. In addition, through meetings via ‘Zoom/Teams’ members are striving to work on the proposed guidelines on NSAID hypersensitivity and urticaria.

Primary Care Committee

Dr Amir Esteki

GP, Wheatfield Surgery, Luton; Chair of the Primary Care Committee During the last two years of pandemic there has been extremely difficult times for Primary Care from the perspective of workload not to forget the delivery of the unprecedented and historic number of immunisations to the majority of the country while facing unprecedented pressure and yet at the same time dwindling workforce. The Primary Care Committee met several times and set priorities for the coming 3 years that includes the following: 1. Engaging primary care by increasing need to engage with other AHPs in Primary Care (e.g., pharmacists, ANP, Dieticians etc.).

2. The group is aware there is an increased need to expand our presence by increased engagement of the allied group including advanced Nurse practitioners and pharmacists. We are also aware that the RCGP is currently unable to support further educations. Therefore, we aim for a wider engagement with allied professional where we could increase regular online training sessions offered to these groups. We hope to deliver such online educational training 3-4 times annually. We are also hoping that these groups can help us to deliver targeted educational webinars and lectures to expand the knowledge within the primary care team nationally. We hope the BSACI could support us to fulfil this objective by the possible appointment of a lay member and a pharmacist in particular to fulfil this objective.

3. We are restructuring our primary care online presence with commencement of a new WhatsApp group of the members only but are implementing structures for other allied professionals to be added to the group based on the need and competency framework assessment.

4. The PCC has reached out to RCGP to endorse the GP with Extended Reach (GPWER) in Allergy competencies. We have been asked by RCGPs to make a few alterations to this after which time we are hoping this will be endorsed by the RCGP.

Food Allergy Specialist Group

Hannah Hunter

Specialist Dietitian in Allergy, Guy’s Hospital, London; BSACI Dietetic Representative

Our Food Allergy Specialist Group (FASG) of the BDA has around 400 dietitian members. We continue to share news, clinical queries and updates through the Basecamp platform. We have continued our programme of webinars and in July are hosting a BSACI webinar on FPIES. Our 31 diet sheets continue to be open access to all BDA dietitians and are regularly updated. The newest addition is our FPIES weaning leaflet. Work is progressing on our online learning module “taking an allergy focussed diet history” which supports the aim to improve allergy education for allied health professionals. We have appointed a dietitian to complete this project, which is funded by the British Dietetic Association (BDA).

An international group of dietitians and RECENT ACTIVITIES:

• Online networking through Basecamp • New online learning module under development

clinicians working in food allergy led by Isabel Skypala formed last year with the aim of improving the dietary management of food allergy. This is supported by the EAACI Research and Outreach Committee and INDANA. There are three sections: prevention, exclusion and treatment of food allergy. Potential outputs will be position papers, videos and information sheets in multiple languages.

Twitter: @BDA_FASG

Clinical Immunology Committee

Dr Tomaz Garcez

Consultant Immunologist, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust; Chair of the Clinical Immunology Committee

The focus of the BSACI CIC is education and training across clinical immunology and allergy. The committee is supporting a trainee led education subcommittee (with stakeholders at trainee level from all of the involved organisations) to look at the delivery of training across clinical immunology and allergy and to see if there are any gaps (or duplicated efforts) that could be minimised by joint working. This group has met a few times and is making good progress on defining high standards of allergy/ immunology training. In line with engagement with the clinical immunology scientific community the committee invited a healthcare scientist to the CIC meeting to discuss views on joint working, particularly in, but not limited to, the area of education. The group has invited self-nominations from the scientific community for healthcare scientists to join the committee. We have received several nominations and will be appointing scientific representatives in the

Headlines:

•Education and training subcommittee • Recruit Healthcare Scientist

•Collaborative working between Allergy and Clinical Immunology

near future to help support the working of the committee.

With the new GMC approved medical curriculum there is a need to enhance the joint working with the immunology professional organisations. The CIC is well placed to be involved in and support these discussions. There are plans for BSACI to work with the British Society for Immunology (BSI) on forthcoming conferences, which will help to align some of the organisational priorities. The United Kingdom Primary Immunodeficiency Network (UKPIN) is in advanced discussions on the formation of a new Clinical Immunology Network with the BSI and it will be important for BSACI to engage with the newly formed network and identify any joint working opportunities.

Paediatric Allergy Committee

Dr Niten Makwana

Consultant Paediatrician, Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust It is great to be writing this report on behalf of the Paediatric Allergy committee as the new Chair. Over the last few months we have reviewed our committee membership and have appointed new members, including a new role of Paediatric Education Representative, which also links with the BSACI Allergy Education Network (BAEN). The group have had two meetings since the beginning of the year and are very excited to be working on a number of projects over the next 12-24 months. These include:

• Continuation of the virtual grand rounds, which were implemented during the pandemic, recognising the loss of training opportunities during this time. These have been very successful with over 1000 attendees over the course of the sessions and over 300 views of the recordings. Centres across the UK contributed and gave great insight into case management and also journal club review of articles –

combining evidence with experience • Work on best practice guidance for the use of Palforzia has commenced. We are aware of the NICE approval of Palforzia, but this came without guidance on how to implement this practically. The paediatric allergy community felt we needed some clarity on this to prevent inequalities in access and delivery. The guidance will focus on eligibility and equity of access, safety of delivery, and follow on arrangements after completing the recommended course of Palforzia.

• National Paediatric Allergy Service

Standards to be produced jointly with

BSACI and RCPCH. This work had begun but stalled during the pandemic. The aim is to allow services to benchmark across agreed standards and move towards accreditation of services in accordance with level of allergy service provided in the future. It will also allow peer to peer assessment of services which is already done in other tertiary level paediatric specialities.

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