Impact of an educational intervention and clinical performance dashboard on neonatal bloodstream infections

Blood cultures are the most direct method of detecting bacteraemia. Reducing contamination rates improves the specificity and positive predictive value of the blood culture. Clinical performance dashboards have been shown to be powerful tools in improving patient care and outcomes.

To determine whether prospective surveillance of bloodstream infections (BSIs), introduction of an educational intervention and the use of a clinical performance dashboard could reduce BSIs and blood culture contamination rates in a neonatal nursery.

We compared two time periods, before and after an intervention. Blood culture data were extracted from the local microbiology laboratory database. The educational intervention included the establishment of hand-washing protocols, blood culture techniques and video tools. A clinical performance dashboard was developed to demonstrate the monthly positive blood culture and contamination rates, and this was highlighted and referred to weekly at the unit staff meeting.

Before the intervention, 1 460 blood cultures were taken; 206 (14.1%) were positive, of which 104 (7.1% of the total) were contaminants. In the period following the intervention, 1 282 blood cultures were taken; 131 (10.2%) were positive, of which 42 (3.3% of the total) were contaminants. The number of positive blood cultures and contamination rates after the intervention were both statistically significantly reduced (p=0.002 and p<0.001, respectively).

This study demonstrates that adopting a relatively simple educational tool, making use of a clinical performance dashboard indicator and benchmarking practice can significantly reduce the level of neonatal sepsis while also reducing contaminated blood cultures.