Background: Blood stream infections are major leading causes of morbidity and mortality
in hospitalized patients. Increasing the awareness of the clinicians and nurses about the
proper protocol of blood culture test is very important in reducing the contamination rate
and the unnecessary requesting of blood culture. Objectives: to reduce the contamination
rate and the unnecessary requesting of blood culture from different departments through
implementation of hospital wide Quality Improvement Project (QIP). Methodology: Blood
cultures were tested in the Microbiology Laboratory of Najran Armed Forces hospital,
Saudi Arabia, in the period from June 2019 to July 2020 and their results were compared
before and after the implementation of the QIP. Results: The comparison between the blood
cultures results before and after QIP implementation showed statistically significant
(19.6%) reduction in the contamination rate, (14%) reduction in the total number of blood
culture requests and (11.6%) reduction in the negative results rate. Conclusion: The
reduction in the total number, negative results and contamination rate of blood culture test
after QIP implementation were considered as performance indicators that the
recommendations of QIP were effective and implemented strictly.