A Quality Improvement Initiative on Reducing Blood Culture Contamination in the Emergency Department

Contaminated blood cultures may have detrimental effects on patients, the organization, and antimicrobial stewardship. Patients in the emergency department may need blood cultures collected before antimicrobial therapy. Contaminated blood culture samples may contribute to prolonged hospital stay and also are associated with delayed or unnecessary antimicrobial therapy. This initiative aims to improve the emergency department ’s blood culture contamination rate that will eventually benefit the patients who will receive timely and proper antimicrobial therapy, and benefit the organization fiscally.
Source: Journal of Emergency Nursing: JEN - Category: Nursing Authors: Tags: Clinical Nurses Forum Source Type: research