Optimisation of the blood culture pathway- local, network and regional collaboration and behaviour change

Improving blood culture (BC) diagnostics supports better antimicrobial stewardship and improved patient safety. NHS England laid out proposals to improve the pre-analytical phase of the BC pathway.

To establish current adherence to NHS England targets the Microbiology laboratory has collected data related to time to incubation and blood culture fill volume across Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust (GHNHSFT).

Qualitative methods, online questionnaire and focus groups involving Trust staff across variety of roles and staff grades, will be used to understand barriers to meeting 4-hour to incubation and adequate fill volume targets.

Thematic analysis of questionnaire responses and focus group outputs, alongside laboratory data, will be fed into behavioural Science tools (Theoretical Domains Framework, Behaviour change wheel and COM-B model) to identify facilitators of and barriers to behaviour change and develop a range of tailored implementable interventions to aid optimisation of the local BC pathway.

Outputs

BIA Spring meeting 2025: Blood culture volume: Rethinking the standard (Winning Free paper)

ESCMID poster 2024 : Changing the culture around blood cultures. Identifying quality improvement opportunities using local metrics and behavioural science tools. (Poster)

FIS 2023: Optimising the blood culture pathway-measurement allows improvement. (Poster)

Also featured on the Future NHS platform workspace of The Office of the Chief Scientific Officer.