Nurses’ Knowledge of Blood Culture Sampling Procedure

Background : False-positive blood culture results due to contaminated samples have shown to increase patients’ health costs, including the use of broad spectrum antibiotics and prolonged hospital length of stay. While previous research have suggested that increasing staff knowledge on proper specimen collection lowers contamination rates significantly, staff’s current knowledge of hospital-recommended sample collection procedure have yet to be assessed in Dr. Dr. Hasan Sadikin General Hospital, Bandung, Indonesia. Methods : This was a cross-sectional descriptive study on 81 Emergency Department nurses in Dr. Hasan Sadikin General Hospital, Indonesia. Subjects were asked to complete a questionnaire in order to measure their knowledge of blood culture sampling procedure in accordance with the hospital’s standard operating procedure. Results : Among 81 subjects enrolled, 51 managed to adequately describe the prerequisites in proper blood culture sampling procedure and their purpose as dictated by Dr. Hasan Sadikin General Hospital’s standard operating procedure. Conclusions : Up to 67% of nurses conducting blood sampling procedure in Dr. Hasan Sadikin General Hospital’s Emergency Department understood the prerequisites of hospital-recommended blood culture sampling procedure and their purpose.