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Hainan Wen,1,* Weigang Wang,1,2,* Shoujun Xie,3 Qian Sun,1 Yueyi Liang,3 Baojiang Wen,1,2 Yanchao Liu,3 Lihong Sun,3 Zongwei Zhang,3 Jing Cao,1,2 Xiaoxuan Liu,1,2 Xiaoran Niu,1,2 Zirou Ouyang,1,2 Ning Dong,1,2 Jianhong Zhao1,2 1The Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, People’s Republic of China; 2Hebei Provincial Center for Clinical Laboratories, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Laboratory, the Affiliated Hospital of Chengde Medical university, Chengde, Hebei, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Jianhong Zhao, Email zhaojh_2002@hebmu.edu.cnBackground: Although the principles for blood cultures (BCs) guidelines provide a recommendation for collection patterns, the complexity of clinical practice occasionally prompts clinicians to adopt non-standard collection patterns. Here, we investigate the influences of different BC collection patterns on detection of pathogens.Methods: The BC collection patterns of 96 hospitals were surveyed online. And a retrospective study of BC data from a tertiary hospital was conducted.Results: The results showed that 53.1% of hospitals adopted the recommended patterns. Among the 1439 episodes of true-positive BCs, 67.4% were found in both the left- and right-sided bottles; 58.2% were found in both aerobic and anaerobic bottles.Conclusion: The present study suggested that the rate of standard collection patterns of blood culture was low and the non-standard collection patterns were associated with decreased detection of pathogens. Simultaneous collection of blood on the left and right sides was recommended as an effective pattern of BC collection.Keywords: blood culture, collection pattern, online survey, time-to-positivity, pathogen detection