Clinical Nurse Specialist Practice: Impact on Emergency Department Blood Culture Contamination.

Abstract

Blood culture collection is a common procedure performed in emergency departments. Rate of blood culture contamination is a metric that is tracked by organizations to ensure appropriate treatment for patients suspected of having bacteremia and ensure appropriate use of hospital resources. A team of nurses and technicians undertook a quality improvement project to decrease blood culture contamination rates in a suburban emergency department. The project included use of standardized blood culture collection kits, creation of a dedicated collection team, and implementation of a new blood culture collection device. Through this work, blood culture contamination rates decreased from greater than 3.0% to less than 1.5% consistently for nearly 24 months. Providing feedback and continued monitoring has made this quality improvement initiative a success for the department and the organization and has resulted in cost savings of nearly 2 million dollars.