Blood cultures ... What they tell you and what you do

Abstract

Aims:
Main aim: To ascertain differences in nurses at the Hospital General Nuestra Señora del Prado, in blood extraction and blood culture techniques.
Specific aims: To determine the asepsis/sterility conditions of the technique; to establish the use (disinfection, filling order, volume, needle change) of the blood culture vials.
Method:
Transversal descriptive study made at the Hospital General Nuestra Señora del Prado. A self-completion questionnaire including quantitative and qualitative variants was delivered to nursing professionals.
Results:
52.9% of the questionnaires were collected from the 363 DUE´s at the hospital. Mena working experience was 12.9 years [DE±7,9]. 57,8% believe sterile technique for the procedure was not necessary. 94.7% use a single antiseptic. 78.6% stated that they discard the first 10 cc extracted from the central vein.
Conclusions:
We consider that the response is high, with over 40% of the questionnaires being completed. We observed that most DUE´s use aseptic techniques and in the protocols studied there was no consensus about the use of sterilization and septic techniques. The study reveals that the majority of the DUE´s use a single antiseptic, even though most protocols recommend the use of alcohol, followed by povidone.iodine to disinfect the skin.