In your job do you perform a lot of sputum culture and sensitivity test

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Ok I 'm a bit of confused here..The sputum culture and sensitivity tests take about 6 days to be completed.Obviously patients dont stay in the hospital that long...so what kind of antybiotics are prescribed to the patient? Broad-spectrum ones?

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Specializes in Acute Care, Rehab, Palliative.

We do a fair number of them on the unit I work on.Our average patient stay is 30 days so we have time to treat once the results are back.

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Specializes in ICU, M/S,Nurse Supervisor, CNS.

We do quite a bit in the ICU where I work as well. While the final results may not come back soon, a lot of times we get calls from the lab within a day or two that something is growing so that antibiotics can be adjusted accordingly. In the meantime, broad-spectrum it is.

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We do a fair number of them on the unit I work on.Our average patient stay is 30 days so we have time to treat once the results are back.

Wow 30 days,what kind of floor is that rehab?

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Specializes in Acute Care, Rehab, Palliative.

Complex Continuing Care.We get palliative, rehab, stable med-surg, and seniors waiting for nursing home placement.We have some for months.:)

Yeah they do get broad spectrum in the meantime.

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