Our aim is to study the relationship between culture positive catheter exit site skin swabs and venous catheter tip. Exit site skin swab and formerly in–vivo catheter tip which showed exit site infection were taken for culture. Out of 50 catheter tips 13(26%) were culture positive, of  which 4(8%) were associated with culture positive skin swabs with same organism. In catheters which remained for more than 4 days 27% showed catheter colonization and those less than 4 days 21% showed colonization. Culture positive skin swabs from the catheter exit site were strongly associated with catheter colonization with the same organism.