Webinar Description: 

Sponsored by BD

Blood cultures are the gold standard test for sepsis diagnosis, and an essential first step in infectious organism identification. Improving blood culture quality is critical to the outcomes for a patient with suspected sepsis. Unfortunately, blood culture quality, including the test’s sensitivity and specificity, is notoriously susceptible to variances in the techniques and technologies used. This is concerning because compromised sensitivity decreases the likelihood of identifying an infection if it truly is present. If specificity is compromised, we run the risk of unnecessarily treating a falsely identified infection. Optimizing blood culture quality requires a team effort, starting with process improvement efforts at the patient’s bedside.

In addition to this team approach, ensuring that key metrics are in place to monitor progress and target process improvement efforts for blood cultures is vital. Contamination rate is one key metric for assessing a hospital’s blood culture quality. Contaminated blood cultures result in false-positive test results that can have significant downstream effects on patient care including unnecessary antibiotic usage and antibiotic-related adverse effects, increased mortality, increased hospital length of stay, increased costs, and more. With the recent national movement toward a 1% or less blood culture contamination goal, it’s crucial for every hospital to achieve sustained reductions in blood culture contamination.

The presenter will discuss the importance of a multi-disciplinary, team-based approach along with evidence-based best-practice techniques and technology to realize sustainable improvements in blood culture quality.