[Music] in this video we're going to look at the priorities when drawing blood cultures now specifically in the blood drawing lesson we talked about how to do a venipuncture one of the most important things you need to take from that lesson though is when you're drawing blood for cultures you must scrub the site with an antiseptic scrub for a full minute the number one source of contamination in blood cultures is bacteria found on the skin so you've got to make sure that you're getting it nice and clean so go back and watch that video if you need to but right now we're going to talk specifically about how to get the blood into the blood culture bottles appropriately now in school they'll tell you something like pink then green because ladies first or something that they want you to memorize well you guys know we're not all about that we want you to understand the why behind the what to know which bottle to do first now remember with blood cultures you're going to have two separate bottles that you need to use one of those bottles is going to be an anaerobic bottle for bacteria that can't survive in air and the other one is going to be for aerobic which is bacteria that can survive in air so when you're thinking about which bottle to do first always think about where the air is so if you're using a butterfly needle like this and you're going to insert it into the patient's arm and then directly into the tube all of that air is going to go right into the bottle so derobic bottle for bacteria that can't survive in air and the other one is going to be for aerobic which is bacteria that can survive in air so when you're thinking about which bottle to do first always think about where the air is so if you're using a butterfly needle like this and you're going to insert it into the patient's arm and then directly into the tube all of that air is going to go right into the bottle so that the air bubble goes in to the right bottle okay so let's show you what this looks like with the syringe you really only need five mls of blood in each bottle so if you have a syringe with 10 ml of blood you're going to split it between the two but that vacuum can be super strong so just watch closely first thing you want to do is take the caps off of both blood culture bottles and use a separate alcohol pad to clean each bottle you want to usually scrub for 10 to 15 seconds per bottle again with their own alcohol scrub so that you don't contaminate then purge any air to the needle just until you see a drop of blood at the end and then you're going to insert the syringe into the anaerobic bottle first once about 5 ml drops in pull it straight out of the bottle and insert directly into the other bottle without touching the needle and just let the rest of the blood go into that bottle when you're done you want to carefully place the syringe directly into a sharps container or you can safely recap and put that into the sharps container later when you draw blood cultures you're going to be using two different sites usually from opposite arms so when you label the bottles you put the patient information time date and initials but you also put the location you drew the blood from like right arm or left ac just don't ever draw cultures out of a line unless you have an order to do so then you can bag them up send them to the lab and you'll get preliminary results in about 24 hours so i hope this was helpful for you guys when it comes to blood cultures again make sure that you check out the drawing blood video to learn about venipuncture and remember with blood cultures we're trying to avoid cross contamination at all costs so clean the site really really well don't touch the site before you stick and clean the tops of the bottles with their own alcohol scrub and of course make sure that you don't put air into the anaerobic bottle or you're gonna kill all the bacteria all right we love you guys go out and be your best selves today and as always happy nursing thanks for watching another nursing.com lesson click the link below in the description to watch thousands more lessons over on nursing.com also be sure to hit the subscribe and the little bell to make sure you're reminded when new lessons come out and if you want to just keep watching more lessons go ahead and click this video over here to continue learning like we always say here at nursing.com happy nursing