Influenza Interview Report

I interviewed my medical-surgical clinical instructor, Joan Widmer, about her experience conducting research regarding nasal specimens for the Influenza A/B screen. Her “ah ha” moment occurred when she was discussing her frustration with an emergency department physician regarding the difficulty of obtaining a nasal specimen for the Influenza A/B screen and the usual negative test results. The physician suggested that she use a spritz of saline into the patient’s nares prior to obtaining a nasal specimen. Joan then used this technique for the next two patients that needed an Influenza A/B screen and both patients came back positive for Influenza and neither had difficulty with the specimen collection technique. Later on, Joan conducted a brief review of the literature to see if there was previous examination about specimen collection technique and did not find any study specifically relating to that topic. However, she did read that moisture is key to maintaining cellular viability, which is important when testing for a virus. She searched for the evidence relating to her clinical question by using MedLine, Cinahl and Cochrane Center for Registered Control Trials. She did not find any …show more content…
The articles that I found compared nasopharyngeal aspirate and nasal swab specimens for the detections of viral respiratory infections in hospitalized patients. Nasopharyngeal aspirate was considered the gold standard among all of the studies due to the greater sensitivity of detecting viral influenza viruses. This research is credible, because there is linkage between the recommendations and the evidence supporting it. The likelihood of good patient outcomes was considered. She has used a pre-study analysis to determine that there is an estimated number of positive screens (10%) and a projected increase in positive screens of