January 2018
Chandra
Lucksted
,
RN
Clinical Education
Comanche County Memorial Hospital
Lawton
,
OK
United States
Chandra saw our blood culture contamination rate among nursing staff was problematic (double and in some cases triple what the goal rate was) and singlehandedly took the initiative to develop a revolutionary, custom blood culture collection kit for bedside staff to use when drawing blood cultures from central lines. She worked for several months with Medline to build the kit from scratch, even going so far as to submit pictures of her performing the step by step process she had envisioned so that Medline's artists could draw the process out in descriptive pictures to go into the kit. The end result kit is very similar to our new central line dressing change kits in design, which means not only is the blood culture collection process now standardized and very easy to follow from the instructions in the kit, the kit is also standardized in appearance with our other central line-related kit. As a result of her hard work and ingenuity, not only does the hospital now have a standardized kit, but Medline can also take this kit and market it to other hospitals because it is so relevant to nursing practice.