Lay summary
In Canterbury, we have the ability to treat patients with intermediate severity cellulitis with outpatient intravenous (IV) antibiotics in the community via our Acute Demand Management Service (ADMS.) This saves many unnecessary hospital stays and is considered preferable for both patients and healthcare providers. However, there is evolving evidence to indicate that certain regimes of oral antibiotics may be as good as IV antibiotics. Some of this work has been done here in Canterbury and has potential to make widespread changes to international practice in this field. This project aims to determine how many patients are being treated with IVs, what the cost of this treatment is (in terms of both time and money) and what patients like and dislike about the current service. We hope this will form the first piece of work in a larger project to find out which treatment is better for this condition.