Hello!
ASCP, through a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is excited to announce two new and freely-available educational resources for laboratory teams and leaders. Please feel free to circulate both resources widely with your Network and interested parties.
Blood Culture Collection Best Practices for Laboratory Professionals (eLearning Course)
This CME/CMLE-accredited, case-based activity is designed to help phlebotomists and other clinical laboratory team members increase their knowledge, skills, and competence in applying best practices for adult blood culture collection in clinical laboratories. Through a series of ten 5-minute cases developed by a multidisciplinary team, you will gain a greater understanding of current guidelines to improve blood culture collection practices to maintain aseptic technique, reduce blood culture contamination rates, ensure patient safety, and contribute to timeliness and accuracy of patient diagnosis and treatment.
Note: While these best practices represent the current gold standard for blood culture collection, they may need to be modified based on institutional guidelines in light of supply disruptions in blood culture media bottles or other consumables.
This case-based learning includes the following topics:
- Appropriate use of aerobic and anaerobic blood culture bottles
- Recommended blood volume for adult blood culture collection
- Proper disinfection procedures prior to blood culture collection
- Best practices to reduce risk of blood culture contamination
- Blood culture contamination rate calculation and monitoring
The activity offers 1.0 CME/CMLE credit.
Follow this direct link to the Blood Culture Collection Best Practices for Laboratory Professionals course page on the ASCP store to enroll in this course for free.
Aligning Your Laboratory Team: Leveraging Personnel Strengths to Support Your Lab (Job Aid)
This job aid is designed to offer clinical laboratory leaders ideas on supporting tasks that may align with their team members' character traits, preferences, or personal interests. While not comprehensive, it aims to provide general guidance to better match the supportive tasks in your laboratory with the personal interests and inclinations of your team.
Click here to check out this new job aid!
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Stephanie Whitehead, MBA, MPH, MLS (ASCP)
Chair, Council of Laboratory Professionals
ASCP
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