Contribution and evolution of blood culture quality indicators.

The monitoring of quality indicators, combined with a detailed risk analysis, validates the process of automated blood culture. Here we report the methodology of 5 years monitoring for 5 indicators at the Biology Department of Foch Hospital: volume sampled, proportion of contaminants, proportion of positive blood cultures in each instrument and drawer, epidemiological indicator and proportion of false-positive instrument signals. The results obtained were outside the expected target for the volume sampled and were acceptable for the other indicators. The analysis of these results leads us to discuss the evolution of quality indicators and more particularly the implementation of corrective measures, their periodicity, their relevance as well as the need to refine their results to carry out targeted actions.