[gregaj]

Hi, I'm a nurse educator in cancer care. We are currently having an issue with taking blood cultures from CVADs. For many years we have put the 10ml discard straight into culture medium (when cultures are required). Now we are being told that the discard should be discarded, and a fresh draw done for culture, as many discards are contaminated. However, evidence is not forthcoming.
What do other cancer/oncology nurses practice in doing this procedure?

[barbshortt]

at our cancer center, we do not flush or discard, but use the blood as part of the culture.

[nursepearl]

some of the nurses here flush first and some dont, but we never discard with cultures.

[augigi]

We always used to discard the first 10ml to avoid surface contamination.

[timdmb]

we flush discard flush