Department of Pediatrics, Memorial Hospital of Carbondale, Carbondale, USA
Original Research Article
A Quality Initiative to Improve the Reliability of Blood Cultures Drawn in
Neonates with Suspected Sepsis
Author(s): Pradeep Kumar Velumula*, Dhruv Gupta, Amit Sharma, Basim Asmar, Sanket Jani, Nithi Fernandes, Roopali Bapat and Sanjay Chawla
Background: A delay or a false negative diagnosis of sepsis in neonates may be associated with serious morbidity and mortality.
Objectives: To improve optimal blood culture volume by 25% from baseline over two months and sustain the improvement for 10 consecutive months.
Methods: Data on blood culture volumes and medical knowledge of the staff on sepsis was collected in the pre-and post-intervention phase. During Intervention phase, we conducted multiple Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles that included education, accountability, feedback, support, and awareness during the intervention phase.
Results: A total of 287 blood culture samples were analyzed; 114 samples during the pre-intervention and 173 samples in the post-intervention phase. The target proportion of BC samples with optimal volum.. View more»