ArticlePediatric quality & safety
A Quality Improvement Initiative to Reduce Blood Culture Contamination in the Neonatal Unit.
Article in Pediatric quality & safety. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Quality indicators and turnaround time for blood culture in pediatric patients: 1 year of monitoring in 19 Chinese hospitals.BMC pediatrics · 2025Article
- Pediatric blood cultures-turning up the volume: a before and after intervention study.European journal of pediatrics · 2024Article
- Contaminant Organism Growth in Febrile Infants at Low Risk for Invasive Bacterial Infection.The Journal of pediatrics · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Peripheral blood culture contamination (BCC) can lead to an initiation of unnecessary antimicrobial treatment, further laboratory tests, increased length of stay, and increased costs. This study describes a 12-month quality improvement (QI) program to reduce the BCC rate in a neonatal unit by 50%.
methodsThe QI team focused on standardizing processes to align with best practices using process mapping and cause and effect diagrams. Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) 1: inoculation of blood culture bottles with the introduction of transfer device; PDSA 2: preparation of the skin for peripheral intravenous cannula insertion; PDSA 3: aseptic technique education package; and PDSA 4: optimizing blood volume of blood collected for culture. The team used statistical process control methodology to detect special cause variation.
resultsCompliance with the standard processes as part of PSDA 1 improved from a mean level of 50% to 100% and for PDSA 2 improved from a mean level of 50% to 95%. After implementation of PDSA 3, scores on a relevant knowledge test increased from a mean of 39% (pretraining test; n = 10) to 92% (posttraining test; n = 10) (
conclusionsInterventions focused on standardizing practices around collection of blood cultures in neonates were associated with fewer contaminants.This study is reported according to the SQUIRE 2.0 guidelines.
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.