Policies and Procedures are guidelines established and followed by organizational personnel to perform skills or interventions in a safe and competent manner. The policy and procedure for nursing staff to obtain blood cultures via central catheters is reviewed below. Also mentioned below is the investigation of five nurses on the unit performing this procedure and possible deviations from Salem Hospital's current policy. We also study possible reasons for not following an institution's policy and procedural guidelines, the consequences of not following an evidence-based practice, and the appropriate response when an unsafe practice is discovered. Procedure The nursing policy and procedure that this author chose to further research was obtaining blood cultures from central catheters. . Peripheral blood culture sampling is preferred due to the lower likelihood of contamination and has a higher rate of bacterial specificity (Halm, Hickson, Stein, Tanner, & VanderGraaf, 2011), but there are cases where a sample for a culture is specifically secured and ordered from a central catheter line. Due to the rarity of obtaining these specimens, nurses must become familiar with the correct policy and procedure for obtaining these specimens, which is why this nurse chose this particular procedure. Identifying Blood Culture Policy and Procedure In my current organization, Salem Hospital, nursing policies and procedures are no longer in written form. All are accessed from your computer via the hospital's personal intranet. The hospital's intranet contains a search engine where you type in the policy or procedure you are looking for and the results appear on the screen. This makes it relatively easy to search for policies or procedures such as obtaining blood cultures through... half of the paper... of Critical Care, 20(4), 335-338. doi: 10.4037/ajcc2011519Salem Health. (2011). Bact/Alert clinical department level policy and procedure. Retrieved from https://secureconnect.salemhospital.org/clinical/Lab/microbact/,DanaInfo=shpolicy.phhservices.org+Blood%20Culture%20Procedure%20BacT%20Alert.pdfSchallom, L., & Shomo, J.E. (2011). Keeping the lines open with evidence-based practices and advanced technologies. ProCE, Inc., Retrieved from http://www.proce.com/monographs/Keeping%20the%20Lines%20Open%20with%20Evidence-Based%20Practice%20and%20Advanced%20Technologies.pdfZhong, E.H., Kenward, K., Sheets, V. R., Doherty, M. E., & Gross, L. (2009, March). Evidence and recidivism: Remediation among disciplined nurses in six states. AJN, American Journal of Nursing, 109(3), 48-57. Retrieved from http://www.nursingcenter.com/library/JurnalArticle.asp?Article_ID=846268