Blood Culture Contamination Dramatically Lowered by Change in Technique

As a quality improvement intervention, an academic emergency department introduced a standardized sterile technique for drawing blood. Researchers compared contamination rates of blood cultures drawn during the 48 weeks before and 48 weeks after the intervention.

The usual technique before the intervention typically involved nonsterile gloves, local skin preparation with 0.67 mL of 2% chlorhexidine gluconate/70% isopropyl alcohol, and no sterile fields. The sterile technique involved a checklist outlining optimal technique, a policy change requiring use of the new standardized technique, and a sterile blood culture kit designed to be used with sterile gloves. The kit included an antiseptic skin device with 3 mL of 2% chlorhexidine gluconate/…