Implementing a quality improvement plan to reduce the blood culture contamination rate in pediatric patients: A quasi-experimental study

Background: Blood culture contamination is a safety and quality indicator in the pediatric population. False positive blood culture negatively impacts pediatric patients' proper management, microbiology laboratories, healthcare facilities where blood cultures are ordered, and pharmacies. The study aims to appraise the blood culture contamination rate in an intensive care unit of an emergency department at an Egyptian tertiary care pediatric hospital, and accordingly design a quality improvement program to reduce it. Methods: A plan-do-study-act model is implemented over 8 consecutive months. All nursing staff members who enrolled in the study; participated in an educational program, afterward, they were assigned to collect blood samples for culture, following the instructions implemented and listed for improvement of the blood culture sampling practice. Then, blood culture samples were sent to the microbiology laboratory of this Egyptian tertiary care pediatric hospital for microbiological processing. Results: Our average contamination rate declined from the baseline of 12.6% to an average of 5.8%. Conclusions: According to our study, blood culture contamination rates can be significantly reduced when blood culture sampling is standardized.