Date of Award
Summer 7-21-2024
Document Type
Scholarly Project
Degree Name
Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)
First Advisor
Dr. Theresa Pape
Second Advisor
Dr. Laura Massey
Third Advisor
Marnie Harris
Abstract
Practice Problem: In one emergency room (ER) blood cultures (BC) drawn by nurses had a high contamination rate due to lack of collection standards, which lead to poor patient outcomes.
PICOT: The PICOT question that guided this project was; In adult emergency room patients where blood cultures are drawn (P), how does implementation of an evidence-based practice method (I), compared to the standard method of obtaining blood cultures (C), affect blood culture contamination rates (O), within ten weeks. (T)?
Evidence: Based on multiple sources within the literature; best evidence for lowering blood culture contamination rates (BCC) is done using EBP guidelines for collection of blood cultures, educating staff members, and having the same BC collection materials handy at all stations within the unit.
Intervention: Using EBP guidelines for BC collection a standardization of practice form was made and given to the nurses within the unit. The nurses were then educated and checked off by phlebotomists. Pre-made BC collection kits were placed on the unit for use by nurses. Data was tracked weekly over the 10-week period and nurses who had BCCs were re-educated and checked off again prior to their next BC collection.
Outcome: Percent change was used as the measure of success of the project, rather than statistical analysis. It was clear to see that during the implementation phase the rate of BCCs had a steady decline from 4.55% to 2.38%.
Conclusion: The results shows that the use of an EBP standardization of BC collection helped decrease the overall BCC rate within the specific ED. This allowed for the total BCC rate to fall below the goal of 3% or less, which is clinically significant.
Recommended Citation
Goldberg, E. (2024). Reducing Rates of Blood Culture Contamination in the Emergency Room. [Doctoral project, University of St Augustine for Health Sciences]. SOAR @ USA: Student Scholarly Projects Collection. https://doi.org/10.46409/sr.SCOC4948
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Included in
Critical Care Nursing Commons, Interprofessional Education Commons, Quality Improvement Commons
Comments
Scholarly project submitted to the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Nursing Practice.