Urine Dipstick Analysis

All samples should be midstream and collected in a clean sterile container. Suprapubic aspiration or fresh catheter samples are ideal, but not always practical. The gold standard method of testing is to remove a small volume of urine from the sterile container with a fresh sterile syringe, and then apply the removed urine to the dipstick. In this way, the remainder of the collected sample contents remains untouched by a potentially unsterile dipstick and so can be sent for laboratory analysis if required. Hold the dipstick horizontally before reading.