Effective immediately
Go-live to stop the 2nd blood culture orders is July 22, 2024.
We are experiencing an ongoing national and critical shortage of all Blood Culture Bottles (Pedi & Adult) that is anticipated to last through the end of 2024. Our supplier has asked that we reduce utilization by 50%. Restrictions to ordering processes are vital to ensure we do not exhaust our blood culture bottle supply.
Restrictions:
*Blood Culture collections are restricted to 1 set (1 anaerobic and 1 lytic), in place of 2 sets.
*Hard stop for all Blood Cultures ordered within 48 hours of a prior culture.
*No future orders for all Blood Cultures
Recommendations:
Prevent contaminations and thoroughly disinfect & ensure proper fill volumes are collected
UMC is well poised for this bc our contamination rate is extremely low, regularly <2%
Phlebotomists and Nurses who collect blood are cultures are well trained and demonstrate a very high competence in blood culture drawing techniques
Blood Culture bottle fill volumes are evaluated monthly and all areas are compliant with appropriate fill volumes, which drastically reduces false negative cultures
Body fluids other than blood should NOT be placed in blood culture bottles for culture
Peripheral collections are strongly encouraged – Only draw from a line if you are trying to determine if the line is infected
Do NOT collect blood cultures before an order is placed
Do NOT discard a bottle to ‘try again’ and get a better fill
In addition, blood cultures are NOT recommended in the following scenarios:
Patient with elevated WBC & no other signs/symptoms of sepsis
Patient with fever but no chills, leukocytosis or other signs of sepsis
Stable patient with prosthetic joint infection
Stable patient with post operative infection, planned for I&D w/OR cultures
Patient with repeatedly negative blood cultures in past week
Patient with UTI infection
Patient with non-severe pneumonia
Patient with non-severe cellulitis
Daily cultures to document blood stream infection clearance
For special circumstances or requests, please call:
Marisol Martinez, Clinical Laboratory Director @ 806-775-8399 or
Jayton Zachary, Clinical Laboratory Asst. Director @ 806-775-8381 or
The Microbiology Department @ 806-775-8375
*IT Tickets have been placed for these changes to be implemented as soon as possible
