Quality assurances: Decreasing clinically irrelevant testing from clinical microbiology laboratories, part I

Forget the “garbage in, garbage out” adage! In an effort to be proactive and make the driving force of the diagnostic clinical microbiologist be “quality in, quality out,” this article addresses ways to improve the pre-analytical and post-analytical components of samples sent to the microbiology laboratory for testing. It focuses on producing clinically relevant information and defines opportunities to avoid reporting of clinically irrelevant information. Part I of this article addresses blood cultures, respiratory specimens, genital cultures, wound and CSF specimens.