Evidence-Based Technology to Reduce Blood Culture Contamination, Improve Patient Care and Reduce Costs in Your Clinical Lab or Hospital

FREE Webinar
Held Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Please contact us at 512-26-7103 or info@darkreport.com for information

Problem: As a direct result of contamination of blood specimens at the time of collection, due to touch point contamination and other factors that cannot be eliminated by conventional skin antisepsis, 35%-50% of positive blood culture results indicating sepsis are actually false positive. These false positive results confound the clinical decisions regarding antibiotic therapy, including selection and de-escalation of broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment.

Impact: This significant issue resonates throughout all clinical laboratories and hospitals, with typical interventions such as ongoing training and education showing only modest and unsustainable reduction in contamination rates. What’s more, patients are often treated with unnecessary antibiotics, carrying attendant risks of secondary infection such as C. difficile, MDROs and other antibiotic-associated complications. This step alone adds unnecessary laboratory workflow burden and is estimated to result in millions of dollars of avoidable costs to labs and hospitals each year.

As a laboratory leader, you need a superior understanding of the scale of the blood culture contamination problem. Though some still think that the 3% national benchmark for blood culture contamination is sufficient for patients and their care providers, this webinar will demonstrate why this is not the case, discuss the profound impact that blood culture contamination has on patient care and lab costs, and present best practices and evidence-based solutions to efficiently and effectively impact this serious issue!

Please contact us at 512-26-7103 or info@darkreport.com for information

Attend this 60-minute program, and you will:

• Understand the downstream impact of false-positive blood cultures, with a focus on antimicrobial stewardship in this era of antibiotic resistance
• Review traditional intervention methods that have been attempted, and their limited effectiveness
• Learn about new best practices to dramatically reduce blood culture contamination
• Hear case study evidence of sustained reductions in blood culture contamination, and the resulting direct and indirect clinical and economic significance

Who should attend?

• Laboratory Managers, Directors, and VPs
• ED Managers, Directors, VPs
• CMOs, CNOs
• Phlebotomists
• ED nursing staff
• Antimicrobial Stewardship Committee members
• Sepsis Protocol Teams

Your registration includes:

• A site license to attend the webinar. Invite as many members of your team as you would like!

Please contact us at 512-26-7103 or info@darkreport.com for information

About the speaker:

Dennis J. Ernst has been involved in phlebotomy for over 30 years as a medical technologist, educator, and legal consultant. As the Director of the Center for Phlebotomy Education, he conducts workshops, in-services, and conferences on phlebotomy across the U.S. and around the globe with the goal of protecting healthcare workers and their patients from injury while obtaining high quality specimens for laboratory testing.

• Director of the Center for Phlebotomy Education, Inc.
• Author of Applied Phlebotomy (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2005).
• Author of Phlebotomy for Nurses and Nursing Personnel (HealthStar Press, 2001).
• Editor of Blood Specimen Collection FAQs (Center for Phlebotomy Education, 2008).
• Editor of Phlebotomy Today and Phlebotomy Today—STAT!, an online family of phlebotomy e-newsletters in publication since 2000.
• Chairperson/Participant in the revision of several CLSI specimen collection standards and guidelines.
• Member of the CLSI Consensus Council, which oversees all standards development activities

His articles have appeared in:
Parents • Advance for Administrators of the Laboratory • ASCLS Today • RN • Nursing • Advance for Laboratory Professionals • Medical Laboratory Observer (MLO) • Journal of Healthcare Risk Management • Monthly Mini-Lessons in Care of the Aging • Home Healthcare Nurse • LabMedicine • Advance for Nurses • COLA Insights • Managing Infection Control • Vantage Point • ASCP TechSample

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