“Wipe It Real Good” is an emergency department quality improvement initiative aimed at reducing blood culture contamination rates at Hackensack Meridian Southern Ocean Medical Center Emergency Department. Blood culture collection cannot be taken from a freshly placed IV and must be a peripheral stick. The volunteers in the emergency department prepare the blood culture bottles by rubber banding a Purell wipe to them so the team can clean the area prior the formal prep before cultures are being drawn. Since the “Wipe It Real Good” initiative began, the blood culture contamination rate dropped from 2.75 percent to 1.32 percent.

“Pull to infinity” is another ED initiative aimed at quality and patient experience. At Southern Ocean, there essentially is no longer a waiting room in the 36-bed department. The patients are brought directly back to the department for treatment thanks to the initiative which has decreased the time from arrival to medical screening exam from 22 minutes to 4 minutes.