Reducing blood culture contamination rates: a systematic approach to improving quality of care.

Contaminated blood cultures can have a deleterious effect on patient care; they may lead to longer hospital stays, unnecessary antibiotic therapy, needless removal of central lines, and redundant laboratory testing. A multidisciplinary quality improvement team from a western US health care system used an evidence-based process to define a system for obtaining blood culture specimens that subsequently decreased contamination rates from 3.7% to 1.

Facilitating sleep for patients with end stage renal disease.

Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) are confronted with many changes and problems; a lack of sleep may be one of the most prevailing difficulties they endure. Poor sleep is often the result of restless leg syndrome (RLS), periodic leg movements during sleep (PLMS), sleep apnea syndrome (SAS), or depression. Nurses who provide health care to these patients can use timely interventions to assist the patients to achieve better sleep.