Which practice helps ensure an accurate wound culture result?

Which practice helps ensure an accurate wound culture result?

• A. Collect from the surrounding skin only
• B. Do not touch skin or wound edges during collection
• C. Reuse previous culture swab
• D. Label specimen

Answer: (B)

Accurate wound cultures come from obtaining a specimen that reflects the wound bed, without contamination from surrounding skin. Not touching the skin around the wound or the wound edges during collection keeps skin flora from skewing the culture, so the swab picks up organisms truly present in the wound. Collecting from surrounding skin would introduce normal skin bacteria into the sample and could lead to identifying organisms that aren’t causing the infection. Reusing a previous culture swab would contaminate the sample with material from before. Labeling the specimen is important for identification and tracking, but it does not by itself improve the accuracy of what the culture grows.

Accurate wound cultures come from obtaining a specimen that reflects the wound bed, without contamination from surrounding skin. Not touching the skin around the wound or the wound edges during collection keeps skin flora from skewing the culture, so the swab picks up organisms truly present in the wound. Collecting from surrounding skin would introduce normal skin bacteria into the sample and could lead to identifying organisms that aren’t causing the infection. Reusing a previous culture swab would contaminate the sample with material from before. Labeling the specimen is important for identification and tracking, but it does not by itself improve the accuracy of what the culture grows.