Education of medical personnel optimizes filling volume of blood culture bottles without negatively affecting microbiolo
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(2020) 20:1105
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Education of medical personnel optimizes filling volume of blood culture bottles without negatively affecting microbiology testing Katrin Steiner1†, Joanna Baron-Stefaniak1†, Alexander M. Hirschl2, Wolfgang Barousch2, Birgit Willinger2 and David M. Baron1*
Abstract Background: Anemia is a risk factor for adverse outcomes, which can be aggravated by unnecessary phlebotomies. In blood culture testing, up to 30 ml of blood can be withdrawn per sample, even though most manufacturers recommend blood volumes of 10 ml or less. After assessing the filling volume of blood culture bottles at our institution, we investigated whether an educational intervention could optimize filling volume of blood culture bottles without negatively affecting microbiology testing. Methods: We weighed 10,147 blood cultures before and 11,806 blood cultures after a six-month educational intervention, during which employees were trained regarding correct filling volume via lectures, handouts, emails, and posters placed at strategic places. Results: Before the educational intervention, only 31% of aerobic and 34% of anaerobic blood cultures were filled correctly with 5–10 ml of blood. The educational intervention increased the percentage of correctly filled bottles to 43% (P < 0.001) for both aerobic and anaerobic samples without negatively affecting results of microbiologic testing. In addition, sample volume was reduced from 11.0 ± 6.5 to 9.4 ± 5.1 ml (P < 0.001) in aerobic bottles and from 10.1 ± 5.6 to 8.8 ± 4.8 ml (P < 0.001) in anaerobic bottles. Conclusion: Education of medical personnel is a simple and effective way to reduce iatrogenic blood loss and possibly moderate the extent of phlebotomy-induced anemia. Keywords: Anemia, Blood culture testing, Blood loss, Educational activity, Patient blood management
* Correspondence: [email protected] † Katrin Steiner and Joanna Baron-Stefaniak contributed equally to this work. 1 Department of Anaesthesia, Intensive Care Medicine and Pain Medicine, Medical University of Vienna, Waehringer Guertel 18-20, 1090 Vienna, Austria Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/license
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