Pediatric urine for culture

[Ben Thair RN]

I am an RN responsible for clinical practice in 5 health centers spread over 4 counties. Some of our physicians will only accept cath urine specimens for culture. What is your standard?

Thanks for your help.

[PedsoncCNS]

To get a good midstream I believe that the nurse needs to help the child to be sure the child wipes before he or she goes and gets a midstream catch.

[nur20]

I would go with the cath urine for children

[nurs4kids]

Are you taking about with suspected UTI or just a routine urinalysis? In the hospital, we rarely do a cathed urine (we really try to keep the hospitalization as untraumatic as possible). Of course, ours is usually for routine studies, not suspected UTI's. We rarely get a false-positive. We even clean and bag the babies, so no midstream catch.